Drop the drama and you’ll enjoy life much more …

The lady sitting next to me did a great job being patient with her irate and emotional friend on the other end of the phone call that was so loud I couldn’t help from hearing the entire conversation.

It turns out her friend, who lives alone, had upon returning to his home discovered the key to his front door was missing from his key ring. He racked his brain and could not come up with any way how the key could possibly be missing, but it was. His concern was that someone had taken it, and that they could now let themselves into his home whenever they wanted.

The fellow ranted emotionally for nearly a half hour before finally getting off the phone. During that entire time, he never talked about a resolution. He spent the entire time emotionally reacting to his dilemma.

I can certainly understand that it could be disturbing to discover your house key to be missing from your key chain, that would be a frightening experience for many people. But the longer the fellow continues to rave about the issue instead of resolve it, the more miserable he’ll be! Prolonging the drama of this, or any, situation only extends the fear, pain, trauma, and other experiences that come from the circumstances we face in life. When we reduce the drama from point A (something happening) to point B (resolving the matter), we live a more enjoyable life!

Let’s use the same example as a lesson …

The fellow arrives home and discovers his house key is missing from his key chain. His immediate reaction is surprise, alarm, confusion, and finally fear. What is his experience if he plays these emotions over and over in his mind?

Now imagine this scenario …

The man arrives home and discovers his house key is missing from his key chain. His immediate reaction is still surprise, alarm, confusion, and then fear. But then he stops and says to himself, “Okay, I’m clueless as to how this happened, and it’s frightening to think a stranger might have my house key, but for whatever reason, my key is missing. So, I can replace the lock on my front door so that, if someone actually does have my key, they can’t get in, and the house will be secure.”

That resolution may be an inconvenience to accomplish, but it does resolve the matter.

Too often, we want to continue to play the negative emotions over and over and over again in our minds before ever giving our attention to any kind of resolution. That magnifies the problems we face and gives them dominant affect in our lives.

It also makes life miserable.

But if you apply rationality to your self-talk, you can reduce the drama of the experience and get to a resolution — and peace of mind — a lot faster.

Prolonged periods of panic only serve to maximize your levels of stress, anxiety, fear, pain, and other negative responses to life’s events. Allow yourself to honestly express your emotions, but do so with rational self-talk and appropriate self-discipline. That enables you to not let events get the better of you.

Scotty