It’s Friday: think about YOUR Happiness Project. Learn from my mistake! Identify your triggers.

Not long ago, I had an epiphany – happiness projects for everyone! Join in! No need to catch up, just jump in now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

The First Splendid Truth about happiness is: to think about your happiness, you must think about
1. feeling good,
2. feeling bad, and
3. feeling right, in
4. an atmosphere of growth.

In my Happiness Project, I think mostly about #2. I’m really working to try to remove causes of the feelings of guilt, anxiety, irritation, boredom, frustration, irritation, envy, etc. I find it much easier to “feel good” and to “feel right” about myself when I’m not “feeling bad.”

One thing I try to do is to identify triggers. So, for example, I spent a huge amount of time clearing the clutter in my apartment, because I realized that when I feel overwhelmed by mess, my irritability is triggered.

Another one of my triggers is customer support or any kind of phone interaction with a company. Cable tech support, cell phone problems, etc. I find it so hard to remain patient and cheerful. It’s so foolish to lose my temper and act annoyed, because the person on the other line usually becomes less cooperative—and MUCH WORSE, I feel guilty about the way I’ve behaved.

So last night, I did everything wrong.

Someone called from a company—which shall remain nameless, though I vindictively toyed with the idea of including its name in this post.

Starting several months ago, this company should have started sending us monthly bills, but we never got them. A few months ago, they started making a lot of harassing phone calls to get us to pay. Which we were eager to do! After a lot of back and forth, and the alleged confirming of our address, it turned out that they were sending our bills to the west side, not the east side. It’s just one letter on the address line, either “E.” or “W.” but it makes a BIG difference.

So we thought that was straightened out.

Then the calls started again. They hadn’t received our most recent payment. Because we hadn’t received their most recent bill!

I said to the woman, with irritation, “Why can’t XXX manage to get our bills delivered to us?”

She said, “The bills are just a courtesy. You signed a contract and are responsible for payment whether or not you receive a bill.”

I lost my temper. “You mean that I’m a customer of a company that can’t be relied upon successfully to deliver a bill to my residence? Who doesn’t consider that a responsibility? And I’m supposed to rely on you for [unidentified services]?”

“You’re shifting the responsibility. You’re responsible for your bill.”

Etc.

I’m really ashamed by my reaction. I instantly became bellicose and obnoxious. Even worse, thinking back on it, I realize that I’d led the conversation in a way that made her make the kind of statements to me that would look VERY bad to a supervisor (if in fact they ever do listen to recordings “for quality assurance purposes”).

Finally, I got a grip on myself and got off the phone. I felt terrible all night. I had to steel myself to make sure I didn’t snap at the girls or the Big Man, just in reaction to my own guilty feelings.

So the happiness lesson?

Identify triggers and BE ON YOUR GUARD. I should have steeled myself better for the interaction, I knew the phone was a trigger for me. Take steps to keep yourself calm and good-natured when you’re in a situation that sets you off.

I have to remember my commandment to “Act the way I want to feel” (see left column). If I want to feel patient, act patient. If I don’t want to feel obnoxious, don’t act obnoxious.

What are your triggers? Maybe it’s being in the car. Or getting dinner ready. Or the morning routine. Or the afternoon before the weekly report is due.

If you act bad, you’re going to feel bad. Yelling, whining, complaining, attacking—they don’t help, they make matters worse.

I accomplished nothing except ruining my evening, and probably hers, too. There was no catharsis, no glee, no triumph – just horrible feelings of self-accusation for being so obnoxious.

As Adam Smith warned, “The consciousness, or even the suspicion, of having done wrong, is a load upon every mind, and is accompanied with anxiety and terror in all those who are not hardened by long habits of iniquity.”

Be happier! Know your trigger. Bite your tongue and avoid anxiety and terror.

If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

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Comments

[Aura Mae]

The easiest way for me to remember not to fight with customer service reps is to remember that it is unproductive.

When I call, I have a problem. I enlist their help in solving my problem and often have to remind myself to not lash out in frustration. If I irritate them, they are less inclined to help me.

It does take practice, but since I am by nature a results-oriented person, I just remind myself to keep my eye on resolving the issue, not arguing or getting caught up in who is "right."

Holding on to an attitude of gratitude helps keep the tone in my voice from getting confrontational or argumentative, also!

[stephanerd]

Is it bad that just reading about this woman made me all sorts of angry on your behalf?

You're right, though. When I was working as a marketing coordinator for a publishing company, I always responded more positively to the those who remained polite. Rude presumption only makes me snippy in return.

[Peter]

Is there any possibility that you could discontinue receiving services from this company? Dealing with them doesn't sound worth the trouble, if there's any alternative.

[Debbie M]

I really like this idea of identifying triggers. Then we should also identify short-term and long-term alternatives to what we're doing. In this example, a short-term alternative would be the one mothers teach us about counting to ten before responding! A long-term solution (by which I just mean longer than a few seconds!) would be to remind ourselves that the person we're talking to is not responsible or that we need to figure out how the person can help us (and how we can help the person) and ask for that.

(I was shocked when I first learned that all kinds of bad things could happen to you if you never paid something even if it was because you never got a bill. It still doesn't occur to me to keep track of things like this.)

Paying attention to my triggers will be an excellent happiness project for myself. Thanks for the reminder.

[Richard]

One tactic I found recently while dealing with customer service people which may not be the most 'mature', but in the end results in less frustration and wasted time, for you and for them - is, after a fair warning, simply to put the phone down on unhelpful people and try again. I had a problem with my mobile phone bill a couple of months back, where my automatic payment for my bill had been canceled, but they wouldn't take a manual payment without my password. Since I hadn't used it for a long time, I didn't know what my password was, and it wasn't the default value, my ID card number. I had to make a number of calls, giving fair warning then putting the phone down each time when they asked for my password and told me it was my ID card number, before I found a woman with enough sense to think, logically, that since I am obviously not a native of Hong Kong, I could have opened my account *before I had an ID card* and would therefore have used my passport number instead. Once she suggested that, things went very smoothly, I went away a happy customer, she went away with thanks from a happy customer, and I hope someone *did* listen to the recording of the call and give her some credit. It was worth it.

On a more general note, I am normally a pretty happy person, but I have a couple of triggers which can very easily set me off. One of the worst of these is that I am long-term single, not by choice, and I sometimes have trouble dealing with being around friends who are in happy relationships. To some extent, it's jealousy, and it sometimes feels like they're pointing out my failure by flaunting their happiness. The three best ways I've found of stopping myself getting grumpy are:
"This too shall pass" - sooner or later, I'm sure I'll find someone, and it will be all the sweeter for the anticipation.
"They are *not* doing anything wrong" - it's my problem, it's in my head, it's simply wrong to take it out on my friends.
"Good for them" - it's pretty selfish to be unhappy because your friends are happy. That's *not* the person I want to be, even if it takes a conscious effort not to be that person. Far, far better to be happy because they are happy.

[sylrayj]

First, I expect there have been several instances of people's bills being sent to the wrong place, because the support desk employee already had an answer in place to put the blame on you instead of the company. Her response sounded somewhat pre-prepared by her employers...

It might be a good idea to switch to online payment, and pay according to calendar and not when a bill is due, if you stay with this company. We chose not to stay with one which handled our billing in a similar fashion, and it was funny seeing them send us a bill for $3.75 in service charges (which we paid), and then one for $0.11. We're going to get another bill, saying it was waived and our account was truly closed, but it affirms our decision to leave that company behind.

[HP van Duuren]

Thanks for your story.

How you feel has a lot to do with
how you think.

So in such circumstances it's a real challenge to come up with thoughts that keep you feeling happy.

How on earth is it possible in such circumstances? I really don't know..., euh.., wait a minute..,

You can be very gratefull for it because
it gave you some great stuff
to write about :)

All the Best,
HP

[eb]

"The bills are just a courtesy" is priceless. If nothing else good came of it, your experience gave me a laugh. (A cynical, incredulous laugh, but I'll take 'em where I can get 'em.)

[Nancie]

Great story, and I guess it doesn't matter where in the world you live there will always be customer service problems. I, too, have to watch myself. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not. I have found deep breathing and counting to ten really helps........sounds silly, but it works for me:)

[Sara G]

If the customer service these days wasn't so ridiculous then we wouldn't have to get so angry at it all the time.

I'm borderline deaf and always use a relay service for my customer service phone calls. This is tons easier for me as I can pretend it is just another IM conversation online and let the caller operator decide how much inflection to use in their voice.

Of course, it does add other complications sometimes when the customer service rep isn't familiar with the relay service (most at large companies are) and I get hung up on or they are just too confused to cope (like the salon that called to cancel my appointment last minute! Grr!).

[adora]

“You're shifting the responsibility." It sounds like conversation out of Dilbert! My last internet provider over charged me $25 and it was auto-pay. It was such a pain so I stop asking for my money back.

It is a great idea to think about what contribute to "feeling bad". I was surprised that things that I had expected to make me feel bad aren't really that bad. I've been recording all the things that makes me feel bad as soon as it happens. The list surprised me a little.

"Clutter" is high on my list as well. Another one is "wasting", especially food. It pains me when I have to throw away spoiled food thinking about some people are starving. It is also a bad feeling to throw out a lot of packing materials.

[Jennywenny]

Great story, I agree with some of the other commenters, if I get into a difficult situation, I try to work with the person to resolve the situation and do my best not to cut my nose off to spite my face! (easier said than done). I nearly always end up beetroot red and steaming when I try to deal with countrywide.