photo credit: The Anti-ZIM

Alright, I had what some people might call a “bad day”….

This meant a perfect opportunity for something like this post.

Had a bad day? Besides the usual finding the cause of the problem and fixing it, here’s 5 other easy steps to lighten your mood because let’s face it, I don’t know of anyone who’ll sit down and analyze when someone has really pissed them off!

These 5 steps will help you go from “I really hate her (or him)” to “Ok, what’s going on here and what can I do to move on?”.

1. Watch something Pointless and/or Funny

Like babies laughing on youtube. Seriously, I don’t know why these babies are laughing (when I obviously can’t see a reason to laugh — the world should be mourning this incident with me!). Watch these babies laugh for a couple minutes, it will take your mind off the problem and will probably make you laugh as well.

2. Use some NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)

One of my favorite NLP exercises is this:

Play the incident back in your head (the one that’s upsetting you), clearly remember the person who has pissed you off. Now, put bunny ears on them, play back what they said in Mickey Mouse’s voice then change the context, colors, voice and their height.

Besides being crazy, it is also a proven technique. Try it out, is Mickey mouse trying to piss you off? With bunny ears too! I don’t know about you but I’d honestly be busy laughing than not getting mad.

3. Blow up!

Alright, the most sensitive of the 3 approaches. Use this only as your last resort.

There’s two ways to blow up.

One is to really blow up and tell them how mad you are and the other is more entertaining, it will give the devils among us more joy!

Tell them how much you appreciate them and how they saved your life…sarcastically!

Here’s what happened today. I was at a store and clearly the lady on the counter was trying her best to make things incredibly difficult for me. I needed to speak with her manager. Here’s how it went….

A. Being a polite one, I line-up. The line is huge, there’s only one counter open.

B. I get there….so I ask one of the people there if I can speak with th e manager.

C. She tells me the manager is on the phone and so I’ll have to wait….

D. I wait for about 10 minutes and I’m getting a little irritated (you know how I hate wasting time).

E. I line up again, this time there’s a different lady (the one that pissed me off, at least the one before was polite!).

F. Then she starts acting like she’s the bodyguard to the president or something. I mean, excuse me, I’m asking to talk to a frisking manager not the Queen!!

G. Anyhow, I tell her my reasons, she isn’t convinced and she’s definitely RUDE!

H. So she gives me a vague “look around the store!!!”

I. Fine, I really needed to talk to her so I decided to hunt for that person (I’m half deciding to just give up and go home) but after 15 minutes of not finding, I’m back lining up (I don’t know why!).

J. Now, this lady there sees me waiting in the line for what 10 minutes? I finally get to the counter. This is when I feel like slapping her.

K. So, she tells me the manager can’t talk to me because she’s busy, too busy to talk to a customer? And, guess what the manager was busy doing? Gossiping on the phone!

L. Whatever…the lady at the counter continues to be rude and I’m at the point where I feel like yelling at her.

But yelling wouldn’t really help here would it? I mean I’d let my frustration out but that’d still leave me frustrated! I wanted something to clearly show her that I was mad and still get some entertainment out of it.

So…that’s when you bring up a sarcastic lecture on how much you appreciate their help.

Makes you feel really good and (hopefully it will make them realize their mistakes).

For me, the lady did.

And I got a bit of entertainment out a horrible experience.

*Use step 3 at your own discretion.