I woke up yesterday in a great mood.The day began according to my plan and everything seemed to be going smoothly until about 10:00 AM. For some reason, at about that time, I started feeling cranky. Nothing significant happened to make me feel this way. All of sudden, I just found myself in a bad mood.
As the day went on, I became even more enraged. This is not normal behavior for me. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. For some reason, this dark mood held a grip on my day and I could not muster enough power to escape it.
The Battle For Brightness
I wanted to let go of the rage I was feeling, but it was a real struggle. I did my best to be pleasant in the phone meetings that I had scheduled, but that was a challenge for me. I went home for lunch and behaved in an offensive way – alienating most of my family.
Instead of staying inside, I went out to the yard. It was a pleasant day and I thought I might get a small nap to invigorate me. That didn’t work either. I went back to work, still clinging to this foul mood.
I did my best to behave professionally in my afternoon meetings. As the day wore on, it became clear that I was not doing a very good job of hiding my frustration. I just needed to get out of the space I was in, and find some place to chill out.
My Impact On Others
I went home craving some exercise. I thought that a workout would give me a venue to express the frustrations I was feeling. I got into the workout and began to experience its soothing effects. When I finished, I still was feeling a bit uptight, but I felt like I had turned the corner.
There was some work to do on our pool, and even though it was dark, I decided to do it. I wanted to protect myself and my family from a potential outburst so I flipped on the outside lights and went to work. I just didn’t want to be around anybody at that moment and the work provided a reasonable escape.
Stacy came out to talk to me while I was in the middle of solving the problem. She said she had an errand to run, but before she left she wanted to see if everything was ok. She was so sweet in her approach. She even asked, "did I do something to get you upset?"
It was then that I clearly saw the impact of my bitter behavior on others. I let her know that she was not the problem and that I was just feeling uptight. I told her not to worry about it, that it was not caused by anything significant and that I would be ok in a little while.
She left and I began to ponder what this mood was all about. I still couldn’t shake it, but at least now I was aware of how I was behaving and how that was effecting others, especially those I love the most. A twinge of happiness began to enter my being as I thought about how important those people are to me. I did not want to hurt them. I knew I needed to make a choice to be happy now. Slowly, I began to feel better.
The residue of this sickening mood is still lingering in my being, but I am on my way to recovering. I do not know what caused it, I just know that its impact was real and that I felt helpless in dealing with it for a few moments.
Life Sometimes Gives Us Bitter Moments
None of us can guarantee that we will live a life of constant sunshine. We can only commit to figuring out how to manage our emotions in such a way that they do not yield negative consequences for others. Emotional intelligence is a critical skill to develop. One of its primary tenets is to develop the ability to recognize our own emotions and them manage them effectively. Throughout the day, I found enough awareness to remove myself from circumstances where I might blow up and later regret it. Sometimes, we just need to take a break from it all and collect our thoughts.
Good moments and bad moments will always be a part of life. The real test is in learning what to do with those moments. When we do our best to shake off the moments of darkness and embrace the bright shining moments we enjoy life a whole lot more.
What do you do when you get upset? How long does it take you to become aware of your impact on others? How do you bring yourself back into a good mood? How long does it take for that to happen? Part of being emotionally intelligent is thinking about things like this after the fact. Being emotionally intelligent does not mean that we will not pass though moments like I experienced yesterday, it just means that we will be better able to deal with them when they happen. How can we develop that confidence if we never look back on the experience and learn from it.
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