Finishing Some Unfinished Business!

Finishing Some Unfinished Business!

Photo By: post bear (flckr)

In these early days of a new year, people resolve to accomplish many things.  To lose weight.  To get out of debt.  To restore broken family ties.  All admirable goals, but how many have been forgotten, buried under a foot of emotional snow, by Valentine's Day?

When resolutions morph into no-solutions, it's perhaps time to look a little deeper inside - the only place from which any outward improvement can begin.  One key comes in not letting the behavior of others toward you affect how you behave.  Emotional flexibility illuminates and enables this process.

Emotional flexibility uses the knowledge and strength to not react to the irrational or uncharitable behaviors of others, but instead to respond to them in ways that both preserve your dignity and model a better approach to others. 

Easy to say, but tough to do, because our society has drilled into our brains an expectation of emotional reactivity.  After all, aren't we supposed to react to behavior that hurts or offends?  Answer: No, because reacting to undesirable behavior only spawns more undesirable behavior.

All emotional reactivity stems from unfinished business.  When I react to someone, I enable him or her to continue to act the way they act.  I become responsible for their behavior.  I have granted permission for that behavior to continue.  Put it this way - by escalating the volume of your voice and the level of your anger to that of the person who's provoking you, all you're doing is dropping to that person's level.  The situation isn't getting better; it's getting worse.

Would you ever try to put your spouse into a behavior-change program?  Probably not.  So why do parents try to do this to a child?  Or a supervisor to an employee?  That only makes more work for parent or the supervisor, because from that point on, the child or the employee has free reign to blame them for any subsequent behavior.  Get rid of that unfinished business.  Finish it, by responding, not reacting.  They're two different things, with vastly different results.

You want to make a meaningful resolution this year?  Then resolve to live your own life.  Don't let other people steer your car by falling victim to their behaviors and attitudes.  Take the wheel, chart your course, and hit the gas.  Emotional flexibility means claiming your right to the freedom available to enjoy the journey.  

~Eric