When you’re irritated, what do you feel and do?
I often react, rather than simply be irritated and feel that vibration in my body for a few minutes. I do appreciate the times when I slow down and sit in whatever emotion I’m feeling in the moment.
You’re listening to the Love Tidbits Podcast, where you’ll discover a small, tasty, delightful, bite-sized tidbit of love ~ I’m your host, LeAnn Austin
Hey y’all, welcome to Love Tidbits episode #71: License Plate Irritation
We recently bought a used car, and I needed to do all the paperwork and insurance stuff and things that go with getting a new license plate and a new title. So I thought I had gotten all my ducks in a row, and I headed on out to the tag office to get the license plate. I had even called them the day before just to make sure I had the correct form of payment, and I had the insurance stuff right. I drive out there, I get there. Miraculously, there was no one in line, so I go right up to the next lady who was available and show her my stuff and she said, ah, you’re missing a signature here. And I’m like, okay. So I said, alright, I’ll be back in about an hour.
So I drove out, got the signature that I needed, drove back. I could tell I was just a little irritated that I had missed that and hadn’t seen that I needed to get that, but it was fine. I took a route that I don’t take very often, and it was scenic and I drove out, drove back.
Come back to the tag office, go to another lady. Oh, I forgot to tell you, while I was there I said, Hey, just check over my stuff and make sure that I have all the insurance information correct. And she said everything else looks good, so, okay good. So anyway, I’m back, back to the tag office, talking to another lady cuz the first lady wasn’t there anymore. And I said, here’s my stuff. This is what I need. Here’s the signature. And she’s looking at my insurance information and she says, well, you know, this isn’t right, or whatever. And I said, here, I just checked on this an hour ago. And she said I had everything. Here’s more things.
And I could tell myself getting irritated again. I’m like, it’s all right. So she looked through the paperwork and luckily everything checked out. After a minute or so, she was like, okay, that’s good. Well, she gives me the new license plate, and I’m like, thank you very much. And I leave.
Well, I’m driving home going, okay good. We got that done onto the next thing, and I’m almost home. So I’ve been driving again back home about 15 minutes, and I get a phone call and they’re like, Hey, this is the tag office and we gave you the wrong license plate. We need you to come back so we can give you the correct one. I’m like, seriously? I’ve been out there multiple times, so I’m like I will turn back around and come back out. So I did.
So I turned around, drove back out there again. Third time I go in, the lady who had helped me the second time was working with someone else. So I went to another lady and said, Hey, I just need to pick up a license plate from the one lady. She walks over, she hands me the license plate, so I said before I left, I just want a triple check I’ve got everything correct before I leave, because I’ve already been here three times and I really don’t wanna come back again. She said, yep, this is everything.
And so I turned around and started to walk out and the lady walked away and she’s like, well, it’s not on me that you’ve been out here two other times. And I could just feel, again, the irritation in me, the tightness in my chest. I was just, Ugh, like LeAnn, don’t say anything. Just walk on out. So I get in my car and the whole way home, I am just feeling this tightness, this constriction, this yuck in the middle of my chest.
And it was just so interesting to feel it, because I talked to my clients a lot about feelings. And I’ve really been working on what I’m actually feeling in my body for the past five, six years. Just noticing what comes up for me. So feeling this irritation on the way home, driving home pretty strongly, and my brain was like, oh, maybe we should go through the drive-through and get something to eat, or maybe this, let’s do this when we get home.
And I’m like, Hey, it’s all right brain, come on back. Let’s just feel this irritation. So I did on the way home, I just felt that yuckiness and that tightness in my chest and just noticed it. And just kind of breathed into it. I’m like alright, this is irritation. And really this was such a minor irritation. I mean, it’s a license plate. This is not that big of a deal, but it was so fascinating to me just to see how my body reacted and what I was thinking about and how I was trying to get out of it through food or any other way. I just didn’t wanna feel it.
So something for y’all to think about when you’re feeling that irritation. Because I think irritation is a feeling that we probably feel often, and just noticing it. And when we can just sit with it and be aware of it, instead of push it away or trying to buffer with food or social media or something else that we often turn to when we don’t wanna feel something. It was amazing to me how quickly it passed through, because by the time I got home I was like alright, I was irritated, that’s what happened. I felt it, and it’s okay.
I love the quote by Carl Jung. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Hmm, something to think about.
Have a good one y’all, and here’s to irritation and love.
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