Feeling Hard-Done-By? Wait! 

If you feel your boss has been unfair, or your client has misread your contract, if something you have published has been misconstrued or you’ve been on the receiving end of the criticism about a mistake that someone else has made…… The accusation can feel very unjust. The natural human response to unfairness is fear, and the reaction following swiftly on fear’s heels is usually anger……
There is nothing wrong with anger as an emotion. Anger can be very motivating in making changes and getting things done. Anger as a reaction, however, indulged in It’s full zest and fury, can equally be the destroyer of things we hold dear.
So if you have been unfairly done-by, my suggestion is that you wait.
Waiting is hard, waiting is frustrating, waiting can be frightening, but wait all the same.
When we first notice injustice, when we have our first fear and anger reactions, our bodies flood with chemicals that help us to fight or take flight. We are full of adrenaline and cortisol and these two hormones dictate swift action. If we are actually needing to save ourselves from a large animal that is about to attack us in a forest, this is just what we need. If however, we are reading an email in the office, lashing out physically or jumping up and running out of the door and up the street shouting, is not going to help resolve that quandary. 
….. And neither is any other reaction in that moment. Storming into our bosses office will not set either party up for a constructive conversation. Firing off the chemical-fuelled email, detailing your exact thoughts to your client is not going engender any mutual understanding in that moment. Your hormone fuelled reaction will merely trigger the recipients own hormone fuelled reaction.
So something needs to happen in order to enable us to choose how to act. That thing is time. With time, the physiological reaction subsides, with time our ability to comprehend what has just happened and perhaps why, deepens. With time we can, free of the fight or flight response, begin to see that there is more than one perspective or view of the situation before us. With time we can treat others as we would wish to be considered. Everyone makes mistakes, even us.
So it is uncomfortable to wait. It is hard to sit with the chemicals flying round our bodies. It is hard to ‘be with’ unresolved conflict. It is hard to sit with a feeling of unjustness. It is hard to wait until the processing has taken its own, discomforting course….
But wait all the same….. Have the wisdom to weather the internal storm. For this way we can take informed action as opposed to potentially destructive reactions! 

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