Mental Poison, Bread, and the Passive Control Freak. Little Annoyances Playing Upon Your Mental Health.

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I am a passive control freak. Which means that I organize my life just the way I like it, and I get really annoyed when someone else comes along with their way of how things should be done. Yet I won't do anything about it. Instead, I'll let these little annoyances fester in my head, building up with successive annoyances until my thoughts are circling around the culprits, imagining everything I'd like to do to them for bringing chaos to my world. Mental poison.

A recent example of the kind of annoyance I'm talking about was highlighted in an argument I watched on an episode of Australian Big Brother - Season 6 between contestants Camilla and Darren. Camilla had cut herself some pieces of bread and Darren was incensed that she'd cut slices from the new loaf instead of cutting them from an already started, existing loaf.

Now, obviously, I fall on Darren's side of the argument. Who in their right mind starts a new loaf of bread when a previous loaf is still to be finished? However, Camilla's answer to all of Darren's assertations on the evils of starting the new loaf was "It's bread!" She was right, end of discussion. It's bread!

Darren stewed on this for hours...possibly even days...I'm not sure, but if he's anything like me - it was days.

In a way they were both right. A loaf of bread will stay fresher on the inside if you don't cut it. Therefore it will store for a little longer whilst you finish the previous loaf - which is drying up at a speeder rate due to having been cut (see I understand Darren completely). 

However, at the end of the day, it's bread. The universe will not cave in on itself if per chance somebody should start the new loaf early. Annoying to some? Yes. Worth stewing over for hours? No. Mental Poison.

This kind of thing happens to me all the time except I don't confront the person, I go straight to the quietly annoyed stage. I won't stew over it for hours but I do make a mental note that so-and-so hasn't stacked their dirty dish on the sink, yet again. They've just placed it anywhere and, look there's still at least a mouthful of food on it. They could've at least scraped that off into the bin.

I think this way about dishes because I wash dishes a lot in our house. Stacking dishes neatly in an ordered way makes it seem like there is less dishes to be done and thus, not such a big job. As opposed to other people's houses where they just place dirty dishes on the sink one on top of the other, wherever they can find a place that the thing will balance without crashing to the floor. I know, that if you stacked these dishes neatly, they'd take up at least one third of the space they currently take up.

Food is one of the main things that annoys me. Just like the bread issue, in my house we have a lot of food items that people will start off the new bottle, packet, jar, or container of when there is still, clearly, enough left in the previous bottle, packet, jar, or container for at least another full serving. Once the new item has been started they won't touch the old one. It just goes to waste and gets thrown out. Why do they do that? Don't they know there are starving people in developing countries that wouldn't dream of wasting food like that? Just finish off the old one first would you! Mental poison.

When I go grocery shopping, I'm the kind of person that likes to organize how things are placed in the trolley. Cold stuff together. Boxes together. Cans together. Drink bottles and other heavy items together. Fresh vegetables together. Cleaning fluid and laundry items together. I do this because firstly, more things will fit in the trolley and, secondly, because when I transfer stuff through the checkout the operator will pack things roughly how I have them ordered - without me needing to say anything. Other people don't do this, including my partner. It doesn't annoy me as much but if people only knew what I know about organizing their shopping trolley how much better their lives could be. Mental Poison.

When you think about it...people who don't stack dishes still get their dishes washed. None of that food going to waste will ever feed some starving child in a developing nation, and people who don't organize their groceries in their shopping trolley still get through the check out in about the same amount of time. The difference is, all these people have done less thinking and been less concerned about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things that is their life.

Being a passive control freak is bad for your mental health (in case you hadn't understood the term 'mental poison'). I could complain about every little thing and impose my way of doing things on everyone else but how much fun would I be to live with? Plus that would make me an aggressive control freak...which I'm not (I did mention the 'passive' bit right?).

No matter how much you want things to be done your way, you can't control every other person. You have to let go of the little annoyances for the sake of your own health or they start to consume you (see my blog article - The Black Dog with Fire Eyes). Free up your mind from mental poison and use your time to think about stuff that really matters.

In life some things are 'just bread'.