Have you ev
er said, or heard someone say, “I’m so (mad, irritated, annoyed) at ______.. they just know how to push my buttons!” I used to think that people did things just to hit that spot of my irritation. I remember my mom, when I was kid, she would say “I think you do things just to push my buttons.” I started to think about this the other day when I found myself thinking this same exact thought when my husband did something, that at the time, I thought, to be directed just to piss me off.
The more I realize that people just do things to make themselves feel better, and the majority of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with me. The more I realize this, the more I am able to recognize that, someone can only push me because I choose to allow them access to my buttons at all. I am always able to choose whether or not l let someone or something throw me off. In fact, most of them are in our space to teach us the lessons that are sometimes hardest learned. When we look close, we may even be able to see ourselves. There are people in my life who I have given carte blanche to push my buttons, and I listen to them when they are pushing, as they are helping me become a better person!
Some people are professional button pushers, they build entire careers around affecting someone else in a way that stirs their ire. There is even a button pushers club, to which, I believe, we all belong to at times. We learn who we can push and who we can’t, and even how hard the push can be. I love the following quote, unfortunately, I do not know who authored it so I can credit them, but it says,
“Everybody has a hot button. Who or what is pushing yours? While you probably cannot control that person, you CAN control the way you react to them.” – Unknown
We always have the choice to allow something to be an annoyance, anger us, put us in judgement, or to look past it and not let it affect us. We all have so many buttons, and each of us have different ones, but in order to be able to look beyond it, we must learn to guard them, unplug the wires that connect them to our reactions, and see things with a different eye. So the next time one of those buttons is being threatened, take a breath, unplug the connection, and know you have the control of whether to give it power over you, or to just move on. This is a great challenge for me too… Let’s do it together…