I am currently reading “21 Days to Master Success and Inner Peace” by Wayne Dyer, and last week I read the chapter “Stop looking for occasions to be offended”. Now honestly, I am not easily offended. I have worked behind bars since I was 15, and had all sorts of insults…some banter, some not, thrown at me.
But I did notice how often I got annoyed or upset about things – someone being bitchy about my friend, someone being opinionated about something I disagreed intensely with, someone getting totally the wrong end of the stick and going off on one in a conversation I was not part of, news reports about foolish people or wars or politics.
Because I was watching out for myself taking offence, I noticed more when I got irritated, annoyed, upset. And it was a lot.
Now here is the rub,…in a week, i will remember less than half of these “offences”. In a month, I might remember 2. In a year, I may not remember any.
That’s how important they are.
Not even slightly important.
Worse, getting my knickers in a twist over these things changed nothing, improved nothing, made zero positive difference in anyone’s life.
All it did was add a new frown line to my forehead, raise my blood pressure, and made me lose my peace.
And for what? So I could be self-righteous, judgemental and get on my high horse.
They shouldn’t do that… they did.
They shouldn’t say that… they did.
The world should be this way…it isn’t.
Imagine if you didn’t let these things upset you, these things that won’t matter in a week, a month, a year.
Imagine if you didn’t let the world ‘offend’ you so easily.
Imagine if you just didn’t get involved in the drama.
I am not suggesting that you don’t do anything about things that are important to you.
Just that you let go of having to get the hump about it.
Just that you notice when high dudgeon leads to zero improvement.
Just that you decide to keep your peace…and make changes from there if necessary.
The news, social media, and often our patterns and friendships conspire to keep us in a state of high dudgeon (that ‘ohmygod, they didn’t?’ reaction) and sometimes that’s appropriate.
But most of the time, it’s a constant drip feed of nonsense that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
The things that genuinely matter, the things you are moved to take action on, don’t need you to be angry or hurt or irritated…they just need you to be moved to take action. The ‘ohmygod, they didn’t?’ reaction is less likely to move you to do something…you’ll just talk about it, and discuss how terrible it is, and be resplendently on your high horse, wasting the energy you could put to enjoying life or to making a change in the areas that truly matter to you.
So start to notice how often things offend, upset or irritate you. And then notice if you will even remember them tomorrow, or next week, or next year…and decide if you want to let them offend you, or if you want to just let it go and keep your smile, keep your peace, keep feeling good about life and save your high dudgeon for things that are important enough to remember in a year’s time!
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