Surviving Irritating Behavior

This is a blog written by Lee Gale Gruen aimed at helping Baby Boomers and seniors find more joy, excitement, and satisfaction in their lives.

MY NEWS:  Tomorrow, I’m going to start attending a class on screenplay writing.  I can’t wait!  I’ve already downloaded Final Draft software onto my computer and have begun writing a screenplay based on my memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years, and I’m finally doing it.

Now, onto my blog:

Is this how you feel sometimes?  I certainly do–more and more as I get older.  So many little things seem to irritate me, draining too much of my time and energy.  However, harboring upset feelings hurts ourselves much more than the ones who caused them.

Recently, it was the conversation and voice quality of a woman at an exercise class I attend that annoyed me.  I’ve heard her speaking before, and she has a certain pitch which seems to shatter my ear drums.  Her usual non-stop, rapid-fire conversation about some innocuous thing in her life, projected loud enough to wake the sleeping in the back row of a large theater, results in her delivery landing on the ears of many who aren’t interested, including me.  She is a drama queen and seems to crave attention, so she has honed her skill well.

Perhaps you’ve been the receiver of such behavior or maybe even the sender?   How do we survive irritating people whom we encounter so often in our crowded society?  The first thing, in my opinion, is to accept that we cannot change them.  I certainly couldn’t have approached the woman in my class and asked her to change the quality of her voice and, truth be told, her entire personality.

What I can do is change myself.  I have learned to carry earplugs with me.  I quietly donned my orange neon plugs and went about my exercise routine calmly and contentedly.  If my tormentor noticed them poking out of my ears, maybe she got the idea that they were my firewall against her, but I doubt it.

The point of all this is that you have choices as I’ve emphasized many times in prior blogs.  Don’t just let life happen to you.  Take charge.

If you’re around irritating people: family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers in your personal life, your work life, your leisure life, or wherever, decide what you want for yourself.  Do you want to suffer silently and be the loser, do you want to confront the situation head-on, or do you want it to change with as little effort and stress as possible?  If it’s the last on that list, then alter yourself in some manner so the irritating behavior no longer affects you.  It just might add a few more minutes to your life or at least make that life less agitated.

If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blog postings, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. Please pass my blog along to anyone else who might be interested or post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Lee Gale Gruen’s memoir: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, is available on Amazon.com.  For the book website, CLICK HERE:  AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

Scheduling Downtime

Take a tip from this guy!

NEWS:  Lee Gale Gruen’s upcoming appearances:

1. Lecture:  “How I Wrote, Edited, Published, and Marketed My Memoir,” September 16, 2014, 9:30am to 11:00am, Savvy Seniors, 200 Civic Center Way, Calabasas, CA 91302, $5 fee and advanced registration required

2. Senior Seminar: (My Talk) “Reinventing Yourself in Your Senior Years,” September 19, 2014, 2:00pm to 4:00pm, Kaiser Permanente Health Education Dept. at Wateridge, 5105 W. Goldleaf Circle, Los Angeles, CA 90056.  Health Education/Psychiatry building   NOTE: Kaiser members only – advanced registration required.

Now, onto my blog:

Give yourself a day, a half day, or a few hours of decompression.  You’ve been swimming out there in life’s ocean, fighting the sharks and treading water.  You need to relax.  Don’t come up too fast or you might get the bends.

Yes, it’s important to rest from the daily, frenetic rush.  I tend to schedule too much packed into my day.  By evening, I’m wiped out and on overload.  The things I do in the early part of the day get much better attention than those at the end.  When I have too many days like that in a row, I become overwhelmed and a little ditzy.

If you’re like me, it’s urgent to program relaxation into your schedule.  Sometimes, I just crave a day alone at home with nothing planned, padding around in my sweats.  Even then, I tend to be in high gear: on my computer, making a new recipe, cleaning, doing my nails, talking on the phone–always on.  It’s so hard for me to stop.  I have to make a conscious effort to do so.

If that also describes you, you probably wear yourself out just as I do.  We have to force ourselves to calm down, chill out.

A friend recently told me that he’s been taking classes in breathing because he has a medical problem with his oxygen intake.  The new breathing technique works well for him.  Now, his biggest problem is remembering to breathe in the new manner.

Like my friend, when I consciously think about it, I do take a rest.  My problem is the remembering part.

If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blogs, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. Please pass my blog along to anyone else who might be interested or post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Lee Gale Gruen’s memoir is: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class (website: AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com). It is available on amazon.com.