Thinking about my reaction to some events, I’ve tried to break down why I get irritated so quickly. One of the reasons is not feeling heard.

After taking time to identify how to stop something unfortunate happening in future, then more time to explain this to those concerned, it irks me greatly when the lessons don’t appear to have been learned. I feel I wasn’t listened to, or what I said wasn’t given enough weight. Quickly exasperated, I react in a bad way. There are issues with this reaction:

• Self-importance is in the way of responding effectively
• My communication may have been ineffective when I explained things
• The conclusion I shared might not have been agreed with, but I didn’t note this
• Other priorities meant, unfortunately, that the lessons weren’t implemented
• As lessons learned were being explained, the other parties were at capacity with their own areas of focus

I imagine there’ll be more. The key thing is that “I haven’t been heard” is far from the only possibility and even if so, there’s every chance I could learn from that instead of getting irate.