The other afternoon I found myself in a pretty foul mood. Really small things were bugging me, and way out of proportion to how irritating they really were.
I wanted to storm off, to rant, to complain to someone, anyone – I just needed to vent.
Then I stopped. I thought “Yes, that’s mildly irritating. But it’s not irritating enough to let it bother you this much”.
So I took a deep breath & looked to distract myself. I had already read the afternoon paper, so I pulled out my phone & starting flicking through some saved searches on eBay. Not the most productive use of time, but very distracting!
Of course, then I started getting irritated when my train went through mobile dead spots. Then that irritated me even more when I considered Telstra’s ads telling us all that they have the best network in Australia, yet there I was sitting on a suburban commuter train with no signal!
But I’m getting off topic. Despite how negative this sounds, I’m actually kind of proud of myself. Why? Well I’ve been trying to teach myself for years not to let negative thoughts take hold of my brain.
And while they were certainly swirling around in there, I noticed them & stopped them very fast. That was a big accomplishment for me.
So while I’m not the best at getting rid of the negative thoughts completely, I’m happy with how fast I recognized them & chose to distract myself.
