Keeping Your Composure

We've all been there, times where we've lost our composure, times where we've lost our cool, and we regret it later because sometimes it costs us friendships, relationships, employment, or just our overall our peace of mind. Let's talk about it maintaining composure. This time on Wife's Thoughts, it's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Welcome to Weiss bok. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to Wife's Thoughts. I'm Terry Weiss, your humbled host, and I am very glad that you just spent decided to spend some of your valuable time with us today on the program. Before we get started on today's episode of Voice Thoughts, remember to visit the website weissthoughts dot com. Just make sure you spell my name right, WYCEE White Thoughts dot com. There you can listen to each and every episode of this podcast. You can partake in leaving a review on the website if you'd like, and so much more, share us with your friends, families, pets, whomever. And also we'd invite you while you're at the website to stop by Purplepitstudios dot com. There all the podcasts that Purplepit Studios puts out, the video channels, et cetera, information on all kinds of things. It's all at Purplepitstudios dot com, which is bringing you this program here today, all right, And if you want to locate me on x it's at Terry Weiss. Also, I offer voiceover services and audio production at Weissproductions dot com. And I am on YouTube. Just look for wife's thoughts on YouTube. All right, that's enough shameless promotion. Let's get ready to dive into the meat of the program. But first first, we cannot do that without doing obviously what we always have to do on the program, which is not that. It's that time again. It's time for the wordsmith word of the episode. That's right, it's that time again. Where you get this week's wordsmith word of the episode. You can become a wordsmith and impress your friends by showing him what a big brain you have and the use of vocabulary. Vocabulary. I'll be able to speak this week. I don't know what it is. This week's wordsmith word of the episode is juvenilia. All right, one more time for that juvenilia juvenilia spelled juv E N I L I a and it is. It's a noun. What it means it's works produced by an author or an artist while still young. Let's hear it in a sentence. Mozart's impressive juvenilia was just a hint of the work to follow. All right, how about another use in the sentence. It's no surprise she won a Pulitzer prise as an adult, especially since her juvenilia was incredibly popular. I want more, Want more, You want more. Jack is an incredible musician now, but you should listen to his juvenilia. All right. So yeah, that is the word Smith word of the day. It is juvenilia. Juvenilia. That's a works produced by an author or an artist while still young. Now you have had your Wordsmith word of the episode. You can impress people with your big brain and your vocabulary knowledge. All right, let's dive into the program today, shall we. Folks. By the way, how are you? I hope everybody's doing well. We are quickly approaching springtime finally here in the northeastern half of the United States. From whence the program cometh to you here? And looking? You know, it's been a long winter up here, it really has. I don't know, Maybe I'm just finding as I gain in years. I'm really not digging winters anymore. Maybe it's just the old grumpy old man in me coming out, but I'm really not digging winter anymore. Man, I'm just not Winter is for the young. But anyway, I digress. So on this episode of Voice Thoughts, we dive into the art of maintaining your composure, especially when life throws curveballs at us and you know it could be high pressure moments, two unexpected setbacks that we run into, and folks, this can cost you. I mean, we've seen it, and I know you have too. We've seen it in play out in the media over the our lifetimes, where someone in the heat of the moment says or does something that they regret. And I've experienced it in my personal life too as well, and I'm sure you have at moments you'd be like, how many times have you you got pissed off at somebody and said something You're like, oh, man, I shouldn't have said that. Because here's the thing. You can say words and stuff like that there and do things, but the words you say a lot of times are more hurtful than maybe certain actions, and those words, if they're hurtful, harmful, you know that hurts someone else's feelings in that can really what's the what's the line of thought I want to say here. The words we utter out of our mouths can sometimes really haunt us and come back to haunt us for a long long time. I've had it happen in my life. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bullshit you. You know that I don't do that. I've had I've had times where I've blown my stack. I was in just a bad mood, didn't get enough sleep, wasn't feeling good, or just was being an idiot, And I've snapped at people and certain things in that and it's cost me. It's cost me friendships, It's cost me probably trust in relationships with family members here and there and things like that. And you know, those things take a long time to build. Trust can take a long time to build in a relationship. And you know, when you utter those things out of out of your out of your yap, you know, it can be very hard to take back. So we gotta find ways to stay calm and think clearly. Okay, that's that's the main thing. We want to find ways to stay calm and think clearly. When things get you know, you just you feel it coming up. You're like, ah, you know you feel that anger rising, you feel yourself becoming more and more agitated or what have you. And so here's some techniques to maybe help with that. And you've heard it, You've heard it a thousand times. I know you have. What do they tell you to do? Breathe? The first thing breathe something we all do every day. Breathe. And I know it's easier said than done. Well, trust me, I know, like I tell you almost on almost every program when we're talking about certain things. I am not one sitting here on high preaching at you from the you know, from the rooftop, because I know better and I've got it all figured out. No, I'm right on this with you, man. But breathe. There's a great book out by Mel Robbins. If you haven't heard of Mel Robbins, she's kind of, I guess the way I would describe her, she's like a self help person, a mental self help, a life coach help type of person. And she had this book called The Five Second Role, and I'll tell you it's I've started reading it and actually listening to it. I shouldn't say read it. I consume. I do read, but a lot of stuff I consume an audio format as well, And so I'm an audiobook there. Here's all I want to hear what other people sound like in anyway, I digress. It's called the five second role. If you have a chance to read this book or listen to it, I employ you to do so. It's it's very very well written. There's a lot of great advice in there, a lot of great information. Just to summarize it, and you can't do it in one or two sentences, but just to summarize it, what mel Robbins talks about is just counting backwards from five, five, four, three two one do it. In other words, if you said, hey, tomorrow, I'm going to get up thirty minutes early and I'm going to exercise for ten minutes, well you know the alarm And I'm just paraphrasing, but she talks about things like this in her book. At the five second rule, the alarm goes off instead of she says, instead of hitting the snooze button, they're saying, oh, let's do it tomorrow, and just that alarm goes off. Count backwards in your head five four three two one move, take action, get up and do it well. We can approaly probably apply that same concept or principle to you know, when something is going to make you angry, make you have an outburst, have a tempered tantrum, whatever, throw a pillow across the room, use the five second rule. You know, somebody says something that triggers you or pisses you off. Instead of just saying, oh, yeah, you blankety blank so and so, just take a deep breath in and do it mentally in your head five four three two one, not out a sigh. That's one technique that you can do. Something else that you can do to help maintain your composure. If you're in a situation where maybe you're having a disagreement with something, or you know you're having a you're in an environment where you just don't feel comfortable or whatever, and you're able to leave, get the hell out of there for a while. Let's say you and your spouse are going you know, you're you're having tense words. Just be kind as you can and say, listen, I'm really getting worked up now about this. Make it about you, don't make it about them say, listen, I'm really getting emotional about this and I'm not really thinking rationally right now. Can we just put a pin in this and pause. I'm just gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna go in the other room, have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea glass of water. Can we talk about this in a little while. Can we talk about it in an hour? Two hours? What have you just hit the brakes? You know, hit hit pause mode. If you're out somewhere and you're around a bunch of people that are you know, acting in a certain way or talking about certain things that make you uncomfortable or whatever, and you think you're going to lose your composure and say things that you shouldn't or act in a way you shouldn't. If you can, if it's all feasible, leave you know, you probably can't do it. If you're at work, you being saying, you know what, hell with you guys, I'm going home, see you goodbye? No, I mean, but you can. You know, if you're in the break room and people are having a discussion that makes you uncomfortable and you figure, you know what I am my my yap might open up and I might say something I regret later. Maybe it's time to get out of dodge, as they say, get out of there, just get up and leave. Why not? Right? You know, it's it's all designed to help you keep your cool, okay, no matter what the situation. Some other things that you can do for it as well is, you know, use some good stress management techniques. Deep breathing exercises. Okay, take slow, deliberate breaths in heale for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, exil for four to six seconds. It helps calm your nervous system down. Trust me. And again I'm speaking from experience, because sometimes I can. I can, just like you know, matches in gasoline, man, I can go off, you know, and I'm getting better at it each day, each month, each year, I'm getting better at it. You know. Another good thing you can incorporate. You know, we talked about physical activity, go for a brisk walk, you know, hit the gym, something like that. We talked about the five four three two one grounding technique. Now, well, we talked about the five four three two one five second rule, but there's also something called the five the five four three two one grounding technique for stress management. This is great. I mean, it goes something like this. You want to name five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. What this does is this anchors you in the moment and interrupts spiraling thoughts or you know, angering thoughts or what have you. That's a I've used that a few times here just in the past couple of months, and it's amazing. I mean, if you actually apply this technique, it is amazing. Another big thing really set boundaries, prioritize you can say no when you need to and focus on what's truly urgent, I mean, over committing fuels stress. It really does. So tackle one thing at a time. Don't don't don't be you know, like that movie with Jim Carrey away back in the day, The Yes Man. It's okay to say no and just be loving about it and say, listen, I'd love to go to the baseball game, but I'm gonna have to pass. I've got some things I got to take care of or even you know. I mean, and I'm not saying you have to lie to people and you know, bullshit them, just if you don't honestly want to go. Say, listen, you know, Fred, I'd love to go to the game with you, and I understand you have an extra ticket in that, but I'm going to have to pass this time. I need to take some time for me. You know, it's just been really hectic lately. I need to take some time for me. If Fred's any kind of a friend or decent person, they'll they'll understand that. People believe it or not. I think most people we don't give them enough credit. If we don't try to bs them and we give them the truth, I think that's a you know, a better way to go. And if they don't like hearing the truth, well, you know that sounds like a them problem. But you know, these are just some things. You know, you want to maintain your composure. We want to maintain our composure. We don't want to just fly off the handle. And there are people and I used to be like this quite a bit, that just fly off the handle immediately. You know, it's like, oh, you insult me. Well, here it's like a tennis match, boom right back at you, bucko, And it can really do a lot of damage. And you know, again it's cost people jobs, It's cost people careers, it's caused people relationships, peace of mind, health, you know, your overall health. So you really want to work on maintaining your composure. You know, I'm a big Star Trek fan, especially the Star Trek fans know what TOS is the original series. It stands where Captain Kirk Spock McCoy all them And one of the things I found, for lack of a better term, fascinating about Leonard Nimoy's character Spock is how Vulcans had to learn to control their emotions because they were getting led by their emotions, you know, they explained in the series, and it led to wars and incredible violence and heartache for their planet. So they started learning to focus on not letting their emotions control them. Now, can can you control every emotion? No? I mean, you know, you hit your thumb with a hammer, you're gonna probably say some bad words and maybe cry. Okay, but certain things like if you know somebody can't make it to the party, or somebody cuts you off in traffic, or you're in a heated debate about whatever. Especially nowadays, it seems like politics is everybody's trigger point. It's okay to disagree with people. It's okay to you know, the world is a big place. People are not going to be like you, and that's one of the fundamental things we have to learn is not everyone looks at the world the way we do and sees everything the way we do. We each our unique individuals human beings or human beings, not human doings. But maintaining our composure is very important in preserving relationships, preserving regrets, and preserving at the end of the day, our overall quality of life. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember, to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at. You in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Wis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right. Wysee Wiss thoughts dot com and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends tell your family, tell your pets about wife's thoughts, and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care,