Joe Apfelbaum breaks down three sources of emotional triggers: unmet expectations, misaligned intentions, and unsolved problems. His fix is simple: pause, breathe through your nose and out your mouth, then reconnect with a long-term goal like financial freedom or loving relationships. He walks through real scenarios like flight delays and client complaints to show how staying centered turns frustration into opportunity.
What triggers you? Now, from time to time, someone says something or does something that alters my state. For example, when somebody talks to me, or somebody says something and I'm triggered. I know now that they didn't do anything to me. Although sometimes I think, they triggered me because of what they said. But what actually happened was noise came out of their mouth and entered my ear. The fact that I got triggered has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with me. How do I know this? Because I have other noises entering my ear every day that don't trigger me. I realized that there are 3 events that will trigger you: expectation, intention, and problems. Let's break this down a little bit. When you have an expectation and you are triggered by a conflict to your expectation, for example, You want to take a flight to Florida. You're taking Delta. Delta promises to leave at 9:00 AM, and now they're announcing that they're delayed for 5 hours. Before you get lost and start getting frustrated that there's a delay, get centered. Take a deep breath in from your nose, out from your mouth, and then think about your goal. What is your goal? What do you want to achieve? If you go right into action, you might start freaking out and you might make the wrong choices that are not aligned with your long-term goals. Your goal might be to be financially free, or your goal might be to have more loving relationships with your kids, your family, or your friends. So you might see this delay as a blessing because now you have 5 hours to work on your goal while your flight is delayed instead of being frustrated and going and stuffing your face with food just because you're so frustrated that you're delayed because you had an expectation. Look around you. You might notice a businessman that's also frustrated about all the delays. And because you got centered first, you go over to him and you start a conversation with him. And it turns out he's a potential client. And now you're moving closer to your goal because you were able to stay centered. You now can leverage that opportunity and build a meaningful relationship with someone that can help you with your goal. Intention is another type of trigger that often will throw us off center. You realize that you intended to go somewhere, or you intended to do something right now. Right when you realize that, your intention will want to take you right into action, trigger your emotions, get you excited or get you nervous. Before you get into action, as soon as you have the intention, take Take a deep breath in from your nose, out from your mouth. Get centered and think about your goal. For example, if you want to take your family or friends out to a restaurant, think about your goal first. What would you like the future to look like? Get centered so you can have a more successful time with your loved ones. Another trigger that often comes to me. Is when a problem arises. Something happens or someone needs to be dealt with. For example, I'm focusing on working on a project and a client calls up complaining about an issue. Before I respond, I take a deep breath in from my nose, out from my mouth, and I think about what would I like my goal to be? What do I want the future to be like? If I don't think about what I want the future to be like, the future is going to unfold by itself. But if I know what I want to achieve with every interaction, with every intention, with every expectation, before I go crazy and start feeling, I first need to take a deep breath so that I can then manufacture my reality into the future. Don't just launch into action without thinking about the future you want to create. Otherwise, the future will not be in your hands. I hope this helps. If it does, send me an email, joe@joeapplebaum.com. And let me know what you think about this topic. As I'm writing this, I actually hear one of my neighbors yelling at her husband. She's very triggered. She's losing her mind. I wish I could send her this podcast so she can take a deep breath and she could start Relaxing and realizing that her goal is not to have conflict. Her goal is to be able to influence somebody else. But I can't control what other people do. And I'm certainly not sending her this podcast because coaching without permission is criticism. And I don't want to trigger the person to make them lose it even more than they're already losing it. The only thing that I can do is be grateful that I'm not being yelled at right now, and that I'm able to stay centered and live my best life. Once again, I hope you got value from this. And if you did, let me know that you heard it. I appreciate you. We'll talk again soon. Boom.
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