ONE
Tantrums. Dude, they are terrifying. I came home to a full-on meltdown yesterday. My son Levi is about 2 years old and just learned how to say “Shrek.” Well, he says Rek, but you get the picture. We weren’t giving in to the Rek monster and he had a full-blown meltdown that lasted around an hour.
Anyway, it got me thinking about human behavior and how tough it can be when we don’t get our own way. I think I still throw tantrums, but they just go on in my mind. I still get angry, stubborn, and totally irrational sometimes for reasons that might as well be as dumb as Shrek being turned off for the day.
You can’t see me banging my head on a cupboard, but I might as well be. I see other people do this too. It’s ironic that disappointment is essential in everybody’s life and something we have to learn to deal with at a very young age. It’s true that we can’t always have our way, but we get to decide how we respond to it. I have so much to work on, but being responsive instead of reactive is at the top of my list. Especially on busy ass nights or stressful days at the shop.
Things don’t go my way all the time and it’s important I show Levi how to respond and not react in the face of life’s disappointments.
TWO
I got to sit down with my dude Eidref from “Whats Good Dough?” A couple weeks back. It was awesome chatting. The podcast is out this week and you can catch the whole thing right here!
THREE
“Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, they rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.”–Daniel Handler
Now, Levi def looked like a crazy person last night. I have looked like this person in the restaurant before. I don’t think I was very fun to work with 3 years ago on a busy day. I always would say “its not personal, when its busy anything goes”… Now that’s a cop-out. It’s not fair to just throw respect out of the window. Say, because someone didn’t pull out enough dough and that not enough cheese was grated in the morning for example.
Although these things can be detrimental to running a busy shift, banging things around, yelling, and being passive-aggressive helps NO ONE. I wouldn’t stop and breathe. I would unload all my thoughts, and have, well, a tantrum. I never felt good about this behavior. No matter what it is in your restaurant, pop-up, relationship, or just daily life it’s important to stop, breathe, take a walk if need be, and get yourself out of that box before you become that crazy asshole that no one wants to work for or be around.
EXTRA SLICE: This song always calms me down if I feel some darkness coming on.
