In my therapy clinic in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, I’ve been speaking to some young people who are getting particularly frustrated with other young people in their school, not following the rules and instructions that are in place. I’m going to give you three ways in which you can avoid indulging yourself in the feeling of being annoyed and instead just merely move on and get on with living your best life.

Firstly, when you get annoyed with someone it’s normally because you’re making some kind of a judgment. I’m not saying that you’re being judgmental. The likelihood is that you’ve noticed something that someone is doing or a way in which they are behaving that doesn’t match up with the standards that you have for yourself. When this happens one of the things that you can do to get yourself past the feeling of being annoyed about it is to be proud of yourself for having different standards to the ones that they have – You can feel proud of yourself for knowing better, for being better and for doing better and giving yourself a little pat on the back.

Number two is you can make some conscious decisions as a result of having a little chat with yourself about why is that you’re giving this person so much of your energy. If your energy is important to you and you want to use it for yourself to do the things that make you happy in life why are you going to spend it on someone who is just annoying, that’s a complete waste of your energy. You could be spending it on better things and avoid spending your energy on people who don’t deserve it. 

The third thing, you can do to prevent yourself from becoming annoyed and spending way too much time in that bad feeling is to remind yourself that the silly decisions and bad choices that other people make are none of your business. It’s entirely on them and you’re going to let them learn in their own way and just not get yourself at all involved in it and that includes allowing yourself to be annoyed by it. If it’s not affecting you then it’s just none of your business.

People think stuff about you all day and some of it might not be good stuff but you don’t want to know about that because you’re too busy living your best life so instead of involving yourself in what other people are saying, thinking, doing, behaving and all of that jazz remember that, that stuff is nothing to do with you. You just need to focus on what you’re doing and the life that you’re living and making that the best that it can be and anything that anyone else is doing that is going to cause a problem for them in the long run that’s on them anything they do that annoys you is just none of your business so those are my three top tips for reducing the feelings of getting annoyed and getting yourself stuck in a bad state when you did not need to.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org