LEARNING TO BE ZEN (ANGER MANAGEMENT 101)

Day 3 of this week started on a colorful note for me, language wise. Why? You ask, fellow growers, because of a series of decisions. Last night, for some reason I decided to begin picking away at my lad nail do…just because. (Just because I was over it …I don’t know, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to maintain it because it was old and already chipping… never mind of course that it’s not the worst case of chipping I’ve ever had, or anything) and I literally couldn’t stop.

You know how they say ‘pick on a scab and it’ll get infected?’ yeah, but it was my nails this time. And I chewed away at my polish for 2 hours straight only to stop and realize at the sight of it, that there was no way was going to go another day with them looking like that. (That and I’d scraped away so badly at my fingernail lining with my teeth, I immediately gave up on strong healthy nails for the next while)

So now I had put myself in this predicament, I had to deal with the prospect of doing them afresh, which was something I had decidedly made up my mind against earlier in the evening. Couple that with the fact that it was already late and I was groggy and needed to sleep, I made the absolutely timely decision to press on.

I did an admirable job and was done in a little over an hour, but here is the twist! For some reason, nail polish takes nearly half a day to properly dry for me, I have no idea if other people have the same issue. So I knew, even before I started putting the final coat on my new do, that that was not the end of it. I had to give it at least 4 hours undisturbed peace to dry in perfection sufficiently as no not make me cry with frustration.

But it was already 5 o’clock at this point and I had to come to school during the day. Even if I decided to sacrifice my morning and sleep in till the afternoon, I’d still be exhausted. For me to stay awake past 6 would throw me off completely. So I decided to do what I did. I gave my nails an hour and a half, about, and crawled to bed. I prayed fervently for the day and for me to somehow keep my nails out of the way and out of danger for the 4/5 hours I wanted to enjoy, but we know what was going to happen right?

That’s right, a couple of hours later I jolt wake with the realization the I had been tossing and turning without a care in the world with semi dry, highly temperamental nail polish. And as a result I was looking down at hands that looked like something out of a 80s horror movie failed science project.

….. Gibberish!!!!!

I had no words. I literally couldn’t make a sound. Nothing intelligible or decent anyway. (But I’ll tell you that the inside of my head looked like the Brady bunch on acid, with the colors I painted those walls. I’ll be repenting later.)

I was so upset, my precious sleep deserted me. And I, mind bogglingly, spent the next three hours writhing in impotent fury at this. This week had taken things up a notch yet again for me. But the thing here is this. It was my fault! It didn’t occur to me, until I was facing the highly possible prospect of leaving the house at 3 o’clock in the afternoon if I didn’t step on it, that all that time I wasted being angry at something so stupid, I could have spent getting ready and going to school earlier than I had thought I would have been able to today. And I would have had more time to accomplish what I had planned for the day. I brought it all on myself.

The moral of my story is this fellow growers. Sometimes the things we let completely derail us are so incredulously frivolous, you can’t even think about it without groaning in disbelief and shame. Like ‘how could I do that?’ or ‘that was soooooo stupid’. (You’ve been there right?)

But fear not fellow growers, it happens to the best of us. The thing to remember here though, and to work on, is how to react when the thread snaps. Work on increasing the volume of that little voice deep inside that won’t shut up when all your body wants to do is cause some damage. It needs to be loud enough to be distracting.

Train yourself to take five when you are angry and go into stall mode. That means, shut down. It’s better to do nothing than to act out when you are angry. Always remember this. You are justified in your anger, but there is no need to create some real problems where you were fine before. Don’t add things to the list to be mad about. So when you feel like punching the wall, like I did, tell yourself that broken fingers take longer to heal than redoing those nails and lay back down and sleep. Or get up and go for a walk. Or do something useless but harmless to alleviate the stress, like watch a movie, an episode of a series, go on Instagram.

Just focus on something else with a vengeance. And once you’ve wasted enough time on it, you’ll be shocked how quickly the heat you’ve been blowing will be replaced by shock and horror as reality and your priorities check back in. Yeah it’s crude but it works.  And at least you won’t have to deal with the regret of having broken something valuable, injured yourself or others, or hurt someone’s feelings. Yes? 🙂