We all encounter people who test our patience—but what if the real solution isn’t changing them, but changing our response? In this episode of Retirement Made to Order, Lee Gale shares a humorous personal story about dealing with an irritating person before revealing a practical lesson about taking control of our own reactions. Rather than allowing frustration to consume our time and energy, Lee encourages viewers to focus on the one thing they can control: themselves. It’s a simple but powerful reminder that peace of mind often comes from changing our perspective, not the people around us.
Lee Gale Gruen is a regular Podcast contributor for The Transitions Network. She is an actress, author, speaker, and blogger. She focuses on how retirees can customize their retirement to fit their own personalities, interests, and comfort level.
WEBSITE: https://leegalegruen.com
EMAIL: gowergulch@yahoo.com
BLOG: “Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years”:https://leegalegruen.wordpress.com
BOOKS ON AMAZON.COM:
“Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy, Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire” https://tinyurl.com/33x9vmcx
“Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class” https://tinyurl.com/5d3yycjw
Click to see Full Transcript
Lee Gale Gruen (00:01.4)
Hello, welcome, or welcome back to my podcast, Retirement Made to Order. Do you get pissed off at others frequently? I certainly do, more and more as I get older. So many little things seem to irritate me, draining too much of my time and energy. However,
Harboring upset feelings hurts ourselves much more than the ones who caused them. Recently, it was the conversation and voice quality of a woman at an exercise class I attend that annoyed me. I’ve heard her speaking before, and she has a certain pitch which seems to shatter my eardrums.
Her usual nonstop rapid fire conversation about some innocuous thing in her life, projected loud enough to wake the sleeping in the back row of a large theater, results in her delivery landing on the ears of many who aren’t even interested, including me. She is a drama queen and seems to crave attention.
So she has honed her skill well. Perhaps you’ve been the receiver of such behavior, or maybe even the sender. How do we survive irritating people whom we encounter so often in our crowded society? The first thing, in my opinion, is to accept that we cannot change them.
I certainly couldn’t have approached the woman in my class and asked her to change the quality of her voice and, truth be told, her entire personality. What I can do is change myself. I have learned to carry earplugs with me.
Lee Gale Gruen (02:07.648)
I quietly donned my orange neon plugs and went about my exercise routine calmly and contentedly. If my tormentor noticed them poking out of my ears, maybe she got the idea that they were my firewall against her, but I doubt it. The point of all this is that you have choices, as I’ve emphasized many times in prior podcasts.
Don’t just let life happen to you. Take charge. If you’re around irritating people, family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers in your personal life, your work life, your leisure life, or wherever, decide what you want for yourself. Do you want to suffer silently and be the loser? Do you want to confront the situation head on?
Or do you want it to change with as little effort and stress as possible? If it’s the last on that list, then alter yourself in some manner so the irritating behavior no longer affects you.
It just might add a few more minutes to your life, or at least make that life less agitated. I’m Lee Gail Gruen. I hope you’ll visit me again here on my podcast, Retirement Made to Order, hosted by the Transitions Network. I will be posting new podcasts each week.
Feel free to contact me if you want to comment on any of my podcasts. You’ll find my email address in the information that follows or in the description section at the beginning of each of my podcasts, along with links to my website, my blog, and my two books available on Amazon.com. Goodbye for now.