Frustration Management

Recently, I have learned something about myself. If something/someone frustrates me, all I have to do is change my thought process or just take care of the situation myself. I've learned this over many instances, but I'll share a more recent one to illustrate my point.

We live in a townhouse and when it snows, we take turns with our neighbor next door, cleaning up the snow. It works out really well, especially when the snow is really heavy and you have to shovel 5 or 6 times to keep up with it. We go out in the snow some and the neighbor does to.

The problem for me is that our neighbor hasn't figured out that if you walk all over the snow 5 or 6 times, it becomes ice that you have to really work to scrape off. Since I end up being the one to scrape in the mornings, I "get" to deal with his mess.

It was just driving me nuts. I know it isn't that big of a deal, but it really bothered me. I'd go out to clean up the snow and I'd get so mad that he had stomped all over the sidewalk with his dog and didn't take the time (that I was taking as a pregnant person) to clean up the snow first. It's so much faster and easier that way.

Anyway, I'd start shovelling and think about not even bothering to clean up his steps and path. Then I realized that I didn't want to make them think I didn't like them or something and I'd just clean it off. (I am not willing to scrape off all of the ice they have created, but I'll clean off the new snow.)

So if I just take care of the problem before I get really annoyed with it, I am fine. I don't care if I have to do the work that I think should belong to someone else. As long as the mess is taken care of I feel fine.

I think my MIL is the same. She'd rather do a adult child's laundry rather than hound her for not doing it and having it in the way. I've never understood that about her, until I began to understand it about myself.