11. Pick Your Battles
This is a pretty self-explanatory section, but we need to discuss it. Again, this book isn't designed to have you become someone's door mat and let this world walk all over you. The goal is to find a balance. The issue was have is that we get extremely upset for ridiculous reasons. We need to start picking our battles, and this is especially helpful when dealing with your significant other or people you interact with on a regular basis like co-workers.
The best way to know which battles to pick is to pause and ask yourself three questions:
Does it need to be said?
Does it need to be said right now?
Does it need to be said by me?
The issue that a lot of us have is that we think that angry thought needs to be said right then and there by us. I promise you that if you begin to at least try to pause and ask yourself these three questions, you'll see how often you don't need to say something. It's a great way to keep your ego in check as well because you'll start to get curious and ask, "Why do I think I need to be the one to say this?"
This is something that takes practice though. When I first started using this trick, it was hard because I didn't even know what meditation was at the time and had little to no impulse control. I'd pick stupid battles, feel bad, have to apologize and then remember that I didn't ask myself these three questions. Eventually, it got easier though because of one of my favorite quotes:
"If you can't reflect before, reflect during. If you can't reflect during, reflect after."
This is how you make progress. For most of us, we're going to have to start by reflecting after. By sitting and at least bringing to consciousness that you should have paused to ask yourself those three questions, you'll start to catch yourself in the middle of doing it. If you can catch yourself in the middle of doing it, you may start to pop off at someone but then stop yourself. If you can get to that point, you'll begin to start having the ability to reflect before and have a nice pause where you ask yourself these three questions.
