12 Aug 2022 · 6 min
Dr. Ed Torrey explains why venting about your day the moment you walk in the door backfires. Instead, try a pre-entry ritual like prayer, gratitude notes, or deep breaths to shift your mood before you see your family.
This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. One of our biggest problems in communication is that we tend to do things off the cuff, without planning, without being very deliberate. This is Dr. Torrey with the Influence Every Day Show. Today we're going to go over what it's like when you've had an absolutely awful day and you're just arriving home. Now, in that moment, you have some options, you have some choices. You've had an awful day. Perhaps you had arguments at work, Maybe you underperformed. Maybe someone else didn't deliver on something. Maybe you got into a shouting match or your job's on the line, or someone cut you off, or you got into an accident on the way home. Whatever it was, you had an awful day. And now you're about to walk into your home and let's say you have family there, and in the past, you've walked in, you've stomped in, thrown your stuff down, and people ask how your day was, and you start venting, unloading on all the awful stuff that happened that day. So if you go in and you start complaining, complaining, complaining, I promise you, you'll have one type of evening. But that's not the only response there is to an awful day. A far better response is to walk in after an awful day. All the same stuff could have happened, maybe even worse. And when you walk in through that door and somebody asks, hey, Ed, how was your day? Your response can be, let's just say, I'm really glad to be home. I'm really glad to be here with you. Something like that. A completely different evening, I promise you. Same bad day, same. Perhaps venting later, but very different evening. Why? Because being glad to be home is very different than walking through the door, barging and complaining. Being glad to be home. What does it take for you to be glad to be home? By the way, when you're glad to be home, it's about them. Otherwise, it's all about you. It's about your day. It's about how awful someone else was. It's about negativity and gossip and anger and frustration. But when you say, I'm glad to be home, you make it about the people that are there. If you're going out with friends and you say, I'm just glad to be with you guys, you're making it about them. That is a far better evening, I promise you. So try it now. It's not easy, especially if you had a tremendously awful day. And you're about to walk in through your door. What do you need to do to be glad to be home? What will it take? Sometimes I'll just. I'll sit in my car and just sometimes I'll pray. Sometimes I'll just reflect on the good qualities of people in my house, things I should be grateful for. I'll reflect on good qualities in my spouse and my wife before I walk in. I'll. Sometimes I'll even write those down. I actually have a little book that I keep where I write down one or two or three or five things that I'm grateful for about my wife. When I'm able to do that, it gets me centered. And guess what? If I can't even think of any in that moment before when I've had an awful day, I'll start reading the ones I wrote before. And that gets me into a very different state. And then when I get home, when I walk in through that door, when I grab that doorknob, I am actually glad to be home. I'm not just glad to be away from work. I'm glad to be with my wife. I'm glad to be with my kids. It's a very different evening. My question to you is, after an awful day, what will it take for you to be glad to be home? Whatever that is, do it. If it's stopping by and, you know, buying something for your wife or buying something for you, for yourself, your favorite cup of coffee, or indulge in a food that you shouldn't eat, but you really feel like you should right now, like, whatever it is, what does it take you to get into that state? Perhaps you turn off the car, turn off everything, and just sit there for a moment, Take some deep breaths. Take some deliberate deep breaths and be present for a moment for someone else. It might be taking a few moments to pray. Maybe you have prayer beads and you use those things. Maybe you have an incantation or a meditation that you do. Whatever it takes for you, do that thing. Sometimes there's a song that sort of conjures up a mood. Do that song from the past that gets you riled up. Do that. Whatever it takes for you to get into the right state to enter that house. The optimum state. I'll tell you, the optimum state is not barging in complaining. That is not the optimum state anywhere. So what will it take for you to be glad to be home? Do that thing. This is only the end of today's show if you let it be. Who needs to hear what you just heard, go ahead and share it with them. Right now. The Influence Every Day podcast is free. We don't sell advertising space, so telling others is the best way to pay us back. But more importantly, it's the best way to pay it forward. If you enjoyed today's podcast, take a moment to rate and review the show, then check out the additional links and materials that go along with it. They offer more ways to take your influence, your impact, and your relationships to a whole new level. Now. Now go forth and influence for good every day.
