021: How to Unload Your Annoyance

I had noticed that I had been working a bunch , like kind of every extra minute I had I was back on my computer and thinking about work and it's awesome , like I'm digging growing this community and this business that we have , and I was distracted . I was not being very aware of when I was working . So I kind of noticed that and I wanted to make a shift .

And usually one of the things that I'll notice that my meditation practice has become more sporadic , when I'm not managing my time the way that I really want to and that's aligned with my values , which is pretty much being present with my family , with my girls .

I mean , it's a lot of what I talk about on this podcast and that's the first thing I kind of went to when I noticed that I was working too much get back into my meditation practice a routine daily 20 minutes . And I did it and it creates this space to be more discerning over the actions that I want to take .

So , anyway , started meditating more and the cool thing that happened was the other day . Mornings have kind of been crazy this week because my older daughter's in camp and it was a short week because we're going out of town on Friday . So mornings were just busy waking everyone up , getting everybody dressed , packing lunches , packing food , blah , blah , blah , blah .

You know the drill . Usually we're running out the door and hurrying everything along and our five year old most days wakes up and is like can we play , can we play ? And she likes sleeping in . So no is usually the answer . We got to get going , we got to get going and we were ready ahead of time .

The other day we had 10 minutes to spare and I noticed myself wanting to go into work and wanting to say goodbye to the family have an awesome day , my job's done here , go into my office and work . And I didn't . I paused and I thought , man , this is the 10 minutes and we can play .

My daughter can get her play in , and so I just hey , you girls want to play keepy-uppy . Keepy-uppy is tapping a balloon , not letting it touch the ground . If you watch Bluey , they play keepy-uppy we used to call it . Don't let it touch the ground .

When we were growing up and it was just this five minutes of getting to laugh with my family , my wife , my daughter . My four month old daughter was laying in the middle as we were sitting there and the balloon was . We'd let the balloon like fall and bounce off her belly and laugh and she was in the game too .

So it's these moments that I've noticed make me feel full and proud and happy , and same with a lot of the dudes that I work with . They'll share these moments when they popped on some tunes and had a dance party with their family or just set aside 10 minutes to play cars and get on the ground with their kid and smile and be with them .

Those are the small slices that I think we're looking for . So kind of wanted to share that with you because it hit home for me and it was a win , and sometimes I like to share wins . I think it's powerful to pause and celebrate the small things , because I'm back into work now and today what I want to talk about is an idea I'm playing with .

I'm preparing to host this , stop losing your temper course and I'm getting the material ready and how the group is going to run . And this idea came to me that we have a limited capacity to hold our frustration and anger .

We can only hold so much inside and then it comes out , and it can come out in a healthy way or can come out in an unhealthy way that damages relationships and makes us feel shitty about ourselves .

So I have this picture in my head of one of those buckets that are at a splash pad or a kiddie pool where it's , like you know , six feet in the air and water's pouring into the bucket and as the bucket fills up , it just kind of stands there .

But at a certain point , when the bucket's full , it tips over and the water comes splashing out and the bucket in my analogy here , if you want to visualize this the bucket is our capacity .

It's our emotional capacity to feel frustrated , feel angry , annoyed and not react , just kind of hold it inside of us , and then the water that's filling it up are our thoughts , the thoughts that we have that are creating frustration and anger .

And the discernment here is that it's not the outside world and the incidences that are happening around us that are filling up our bucket . It's our thoughts and that's where we can really find our power is identifying these thoughts . So let's say you're on vacation with your family and it's been a good vacation and it's been a lot .

There's a lot of planning that goes into it , there's a lot of traveling and long lines and dinners out , and you're spending money and it's really fun . This is like what we do . We want to have a great vacation with our family and good family trips . And at the end of the trip it just comes to a head where your kids are asking for more .

They want to go on one more ride , they want to go out to dinner one more time or do this one more activity . And you get into an argument with them and that argument , that reaction , is because your bucket's full , because afterwards , after you argue with your kids , you're not . That's not how you wanted to show up on vacation . It's an overreaction .

Your wife kind of points it out to you . You know it already and it feels you know just a bummer . So what happened here ? If we look at this , how did the bucket get filled up ? It wasn't just in that moment when your kids were asking for more , more , more .

The bucket started to get filled at the beginning of the trip , maybe even before the trip at work . It started getting filled when you couldn't find the right shirt as you were packing , or when you were rushing out the door and someone forgot to go pee and they had to run back in and go pee .

You were having thoughts in those moments like come on , can't we get going , let's go , we gotta move . How could you forget to go pee ? I told you to go pee 10 minutes ago and it feels like it's the incident right , that the kid is making you late , but it's our thoughts .

We're interpreting that situation as wrong and it shouldn't be happening and it makes us feel frustrated and we can take it . We're not gonna flip out in that moment . We're still excited about the trip . Maybe we even like laugh at it .

But then there's traffic on the way to the airport or you're standing in long security lines and all these things that are happening throughout the trip . Our bucket starts to fill up and we're navigating it . We're still having fun in moments .

But the small incidences where the kids are acting up at dinner and the plans aren't going the way you want , we start to have thoughts , our brain starts interpreting them that this shouldn't be going that way , your buckets getting pretty full with water with these thoughts that you've been having throughout the trip .

And this isn't to say like we're not blaming ourselves here . I don't want to blame us for filling up our own bucket .

Like these things that happen in life , life's tough , but when we fight against what's happening with thoughts that we are thinking it should be different , or people should be acting different , or kids should be acting different , or something gets delayed and it shouldn't have gotten delayed , we allow our bucket to get filled up and your brain , in that moment when

your kids are asking for more , is going to start feeding you thoughts like they're being ungrateful , they don't appreciate all the effort their mom and I put into this trip . And your bucket tips , the water gets dumped out and you're bummed . Right , it's not the biggest deal in the world . Right , you'll recover . The trip was still fun .

But you know , if we take a look in the mirror , this is something that we could get better at . And how do we get ahead of it ? We don't let our bucket fill up . We stop our bucket from filling up with these thoughts . These thoughts are going to come .

There's going to be some water in the bucket , but we can dump the bucket away from our family , and the way that we do this are thought dumps . Talked about thought dumps before . It's putting your thoughts on paper . It's putting your thoughts on a computer screen and type them up , or putting your thoughts into the ether by saying them out loud .

When , on vacation , this could look like early in the morning , you take a walk or you go grab a coffee and write it on a scratch piece of paper . Like we start doing these thought dumps and start getting the thoughts of what's frustrating us out of our head , we'll start emptying that bucket .

A few podcasts ago I talked about some Stoic philosophy and Stoic practices , and this is a Stoic practice that Marcus Aurelius talks about . Before his day started , he would think about the things that were going to be frustrating him that day . He was the emperor of Rome . There are going to be people that come and ask him for things .

There are going to be people that make mistakes , and he understood that if he got ahead of that , he wouldn't react so quickly in the moment . So if we're getting ready to travel for the day , we can go and thought dump . There's probably going to be long lines at the airport . There's probably going to be traffic , though rental car might not go very smoothly .

That's going to suck , it's going to be a bummer . Those are thoughts in our head . I'm going to get frustrated Getting those out . It's crazy , but it works . It really works . And when you start doing this , your actions are going to change and you can look ahead .

You can write what might come up and frustrate you and you can write about yesterday the way that the kids were acting at dinner was a pain in the ass . They weren't listening on the hike that we took and it freaked me out those kinds of things that have happened in the past .

We can write them down , empty out the bucket and when you start doing this work , your actions are gonna change . This is what I'm gonna get into . You can choose how to respond instead of just letting your bucket dump all over the place .

If your bucket's not full , you can choose how to respond , like maybe you wanna call in a sub , maybe you notice the bucket filling up and you're like my kids are asking for more , more , more . I notice that my thoughts are thinking that they're ungrateful . They don't appreciate all the effort I'm checking out . Call mom in , can you take over this conversation ?

Or you can choose to call a time out and take a breather . Just step away , take three breaths , see if you can get back in the game and handle it without reacting from the anger and losing your temper . The real I think the real powerful one is being able to connect and empathize with how the other person might be feeling .

Our kid in that moment could be like yeah , you could just say like , yeah , I get it . I wish the trip didn't have to end either . I wish we could do more , more , more . I totally get it and we've done a lot and the answer's no here , like we've had a really , really good time and we're not gonna do anymore right now .

Who knows how they'll respond , but you give them at least that opportunity to be seen . You get why they want to do more and then you tell them how it is and then you can put your foot down or whatever needs to happen .

So notice , when your bucket is starting to get filled up , when you start to feel tight or frustrated or gritted teeth and you're trying to hold it all together and , instead of letting your bucket tip over . Empty it out in a responsible way .

Doing a thought dump , typing it out on a computer , getting your thoughts out by taking a walk and speaking them out loud . It's really going to impact your emotional capacity . It's gonna feel better . You're gonna unload some of that stuff without damaging the relationships . So try it out . Let me know what you think . Hope you guys have an awesome week .

Go to thedurabledadcom . Thedurabledadcom . If you wanna learn more about this work , take it to the next level and I will catch you later .