We all experience stressful moments, and times of upheaval in our lives. Our natural responses to these instances are, to a great extent, based on our previous life experiences, our beliefs, and our personalities. In other words, we are likely to respond differently to stress than someone else, even someone in our own family. Some people choose to become bitter, while others look at life with gratitude. Our consistent responses to life’s challenging moments often determine the outcomes of those moments, and for sure who we become through those experiences.
Eggs vs Potatoes
I recently read on social media about the difference between eggs vs potatoes, when boiled. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the story again to give credit to the author, so my apologies for that. When boiled, eggs become hard and potatoes become soft. Consider the boiling water as the turmoil of life and the outcome of the food the outcomes in our lives. Will we allow hard times to make us hard inside, bitter, untrusting, grumpy, angry, or any number of other less desirable results? Or can we use gratitude, faith, perspective, and kindness to soften our hearts and minds? Recognize that in either the egg or potato situation, the water heats up slowly and before we know it, we’re cooked. Our initial response might still be to fight against the learning process of life. YET, we get to choose thereafter whether or not we will open up to learn from the experience or if we’ll become hard-boiled. What steps will lead to a softening experience instead of a hardening one?

1. Recognize when emotions or situations start to heat up
As humans, we all have a multitude of emotions and emotional ranges and varying skills to manage these based on what we’ve learned, what’s been modeled for us, and what we’ve chosen to apply. Life can come at us fast and we need to be prepared with a variety of resources and skills to manage the situations and challenges we face. Learning to recognize our own triggers, emotional levels, and responses will help us better know how and when to respond effectively. When the heat gets turned up too high too fast, we tend to have emotional meltdowns, physical illness, or angry outbursts. Self-awareness can allow us to recognize those signs that the water is starting to boil or evaporate. We don’t want to get to the evaporation level, that’s when things get burned – like feelings, relationships, and trust. Have you ever run out of water when boiling potatoes? The spuds get scalded to the pan and the whole bunch smells and tastes of burnt potato. BLAH!! This can happen in our relationships when our emotions get hot for too long and we engage scalding words, and burn the bridges of trust and compassion. When this happens repeatedly in our relationships, people stop wanting to eat potatoes (have relationships, conversations, or interactions). Check the heat inside you by being aware of your emotional levels, and check the heat of the situation by gaging where the other person(s) is as well. Good conversations, engaging interactions, and bonding occur when we use a low-level consistent heat to transform our relationships into delicious and enjoyable outcomes.
2. Use available resources to manage the heat of emotions
Once we’ve learned to recognize when the heat begins to rise, we can call upon our skills and resources to manage it effectively. We might need to turn down the heat to deal with the challenges at a more manageable level, such as recognizing when we’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed and taking a time out to decompress and reset. Generally, when the heat rises quickly so do our emotional levels. This can lead to shifting into fight/flight/freeze where we often burn bridges, light fires under others, and make a mess of things – like scalding the potatoes or boiling out all the water in the pan. Keep the heat at a manageable level and the outcomes will turn out better. Our resources might be recognizing early warning signs of impending big emotions, being self-aware of personal triggers and trigger responses, and knowing our own limitations in varying situations. It might also be helpful to know the triggers, limitations, and challenges of those in our close circle of influence so we understand what THEIR responses might be in different situations. For example, knowing your kids get cranky and irritable when they’re tired, hungry, or stressed – which might all occur after school – plan accordingly by having some down time to decompress, eat a snack, and get a hug before big emotions take over. Recognizing that your spouse wants to have conversations when their emotions are escalated, establish conversational boundaries beforehand and maintain this boundary to prevent unhealthy communications that cause damage to the relationship. It’s like deciding what temperature the food cooks best at, and keeping the burners at that temperature. When the flames start to rise from the heat you can either turn down the burner or remove the pan (get control of emotions or walk away to calm down).
3. Choose beforehand the outcomes you desire
Eggs can be cracked open, fried, boiled, poached, scrambled, and added to other ingredients to make a variety of edible offerings. Potatoes, too, can be baked, mashed, boiled, and mixed with other ingredients to make flavorful dishes. Like potatoes and eggs, we can experience challenges, changes, and transformations, on our own or mixed with others. Each will bring a different result. The trick is to decide beforehand which outcome you want in the end. If you hope for potato salad but put the spud in the oven and bake it, you will never get potato salad. Thus, choosing the outcome desired will determine, many times, the tools you choose to use for the transformation. Do you need an oven, boiling water, a potato masher? Do you need other ingredients like salt, butter, milk? Because our emotions hit multiple levels of intensity, level 1 skills will never help at level 4 emotions. This is why deep breathing doesn’t help when we are extremely upset, this is a higher level of emotion. Breathing is great at level 1 or 2, but doesn’t generally work with more intense emotions. So be aware of the skills needed at each level of emotion, but try to keep the heat low so the emotions are more manageable. If you desire healthy, strong bonds then choosing to engage in kind communications, managing emotions, and supporting others when they’re struggling will be required. Using harsh words, loud voices, and mean behaviors will never lead to healthy, strong bonds. It’s like cooking the potato on high and expecting not to get burned. If you aren’t sure how to change the heat, if you’re missing important skills to manage emotions, or if you don’t know how to create the outcomes desired, reach out for assistance today. If no one’s ever taught you how to boil eggs or potatoes, and you’re just doing the best you know how with the skills you’ve obtained, you may struggle to get the desired outcomes with eggs boiled to just the right soft or hard. Find a good cook (therapist or other professional) to give you some tips.

Conclusion
We live in a world where the heat is going to get turned on, and turned up, at regular intervals. By checking the heat (our emotions or situations) regularly to keep it at a consistent level we are more likely to obtain the outcomes we desire. If we don’t want scorched potatoes, we’d better not let the heat get too high and evaporate all the water – which happens in relationships when over time we evaporate trust, love, and kindness with hot tempers and scalding words. Keep a watch on your temperature levels, and the state of the eggs or potatoes by checking in often. If you aren’t sure how to obtain the desired state of eggs or potatoes, find someone who can give you lessons in cooking (or relationship development). Then, when we’ve managed our emotions, added skills, and transformed our circumstances into the results we desire, we can enjoy a delicious relationship, a transformational moment, or our favorite comfort food/behaviors.
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