If your Emotionally Charged up, Step Aaawwaayy from the Technology…Here’s why

Have you ever used technology when your emotionally charged up? I know I have and guess what? I know you have too. It happens to all of us. The truth is, that in those times when your feeling like that, is the perfect time to step away from technology completely or at least take a break from it to give yourself a chance to recoup, recharge and recover. If you don’t, you risk doing things you wouldn’t normally do because you’re not thinking clearly.

One doozy that still stings me to this very day is: I was at work and received an email from my manager at the time that was having a really tough day. Patience was a little thin and attitude was high. It seemed like bad vernacular was the theme for the day.

After reading the email, I ended up taking it very personally and getting majorly upset and frustrated. This frustration and being upset led to my emotions getting out of control. Needless to say, because I let my emotions get hold of me, I then proceeded to compose a scathing and hurtful email response back. Once I had the email response finished, I then popped open the company directory, selected the person’s name and sent it off. Whewww! I feel better now.

Unbeknownst to me, shortly after I sent the email off, I get a phone call from a Director in a totally different department at my company. They introduced themselves and proceeded to let me know that they had received my email. It stopped me dead in my tracks and I instantly thought to myself silently, “Who did I send this email to?”. Well, sure enough I went back and looked and I sent it to a person in the company directory that had the same first name but a different last name. Ouch! Everything ended up working out fine but that was a really hard lesson to learn.

For myself, when I feel my emotions starting to get charged up be it through an email, text message or social networking comment or status update, the first thing I do is Step away from the technology. This gives me a chance to take a deep breath until I feel I can look at things objectively. The last thing I want to do is send an outraged response and make the situation escalate. That’s definitely not the goal.

If you learn this one simple strategy, your restraint can pay enormous dividends. Who knows how many relationships are damaged, or at least adversely affected, every day, by someone not being willing to step away from the technology?

Share your comments and thoughts.