Annoying Behavior

What Options Do You Have?

Don't you just hate it when kids in your presence exhibit behavior that you just can't stomach? When it concerns your own kids or kids in your care - in other words, when they move within the circle of your own influence - then you may have options to address the annoying behavior. But what do you do when the behavior takes place outside of your circle of influence or when the behavior is just annoying to you personally? In other words, what options are left when there is clearly nothing else for you to do than to swallow and accept it?


Loud Play and Loud Mopeds

This exact thing happened to me recently, and repeatedly I might add. The first instance was children playing and yelling, creating a ruckus in the yard next door, after they had come home from day care. This happened right at the moment that I was retreating to my back porch after a long day at work. The other instance was young teens enjoying the new tarmac on the road by going up and down the street on their mopeds and motorbikes, causing vrooming sounds to rise at odd hours in the neighborhood where I happened to be staying temporarily.

     Both occasions called forth feelings of annoyance. At the same time it was clear to me that there was not much that I could do, or wanted to do, about them: I support kids playing outdoors, especially in their own backyard, and I understand that kids need to be able to express joy and frustration as part of that play. As to the revving of engines, I know young teens love showing off and need to feel that the world is theirs to discover - it's part of growing up. In both cases then, as a neighbor and as a visitor, there was not much I could do to change the situation.


Reframe

Now comes the interesting part: given that these sources of personal annoyance were directly under my nose and given the fact that I had decided not to interfere one way or the other, what options did I have left to work with? This is where reframing comes in.

     Reframing means putting something into a different context in order to give it a new meaning. The new meaning that results from the reframing causes a different response and a different emotion associated with it. How do you go about reframing? Reframing happens when you insert gratitude into the equation.

     In the case of the rambunctious neighbor children I told myself the following:

I am grateful for new life on this earth and in this town 

I am grateful to life for renewing life

I love living where I live

I am grateful to my neighbors for living next to me

I am grateful to my neighbor children for being sparks of the divine

I love it when kids are lively and full of energy

I am grateful for knowing that all is one

I am grateful for knowing that liveliness and energy are part of me

I love observing and experiencing new life and liveliness around me

I am grateful for the opportunity to experience liveliness in new ways (ha!  isn't that a good one!)

I love opening up to new ways to experience creation happening around me

I embrace life as it expresses all around me

Things Change Through Gratitude

     Next thing I knew, three things seemed to happen all at once:

• the kids next door dimmed their voices considerably on occasion if not much of the time
• the kids chose times to play outside when I was not there
• the kids' loud play no longer annoyed or even bothered me

     This may look like three separate things; my guess though is that they are really all one and the same thing: namely, they manifest the fact that, through the expression of gratitude, I was able to accept and embrace a facet of life that I had been excluding before.

     And what about the revving mopeds in the neighborhood? This situation was no doubt a revisiting of the first situation, egging me on to accept and embrace aspects of life I was refusing to allow in. Once accepted and embraced, using the tool of genuine gratitude, the need for appearances to jar my status quo was no longer there and the annoyances melted away.

     Have you noticed how gratitude can shift your perception of the world? I'd love to hear from you. Please share by leaving a comment.

Footnote: 

Gratitude and reframing (recontextualization) are mentioned in Neale D. Walsch's book 

The Only Thing That Matters as some of the tools that help you deal with negative thinking. 

Highly recommended!