How To Be Less Dramatic – Life Isn’t Really A Stage
Sometimes things don’t go our way, we have a mishap or a problem arises in our lives that can often seem insurmountable. Tackling that problem and dealing with the stresses of daily life can either be easy or difficult but that mainly depends on how you are looking to approach them.
Drama often happens when something gets blown up out of proportion and crowds gather and everyone chimes in and tends to make things much worse than they actually are.
Being less dramatic means putting things into perspective. To see issues for what they are and not what you first perceive them to be. You need to take a step back where you see drama occurring. Drama is a beast that needs constant feeding. Avoid chipping in with your two cents and steer clear from those who can’t.
It’s a myth that there’s nothing like a bit of drama to make the day go better. Drama and the drama queens are often bitter selfish people who love to see the misery of other and to rapidly spread that misery around like a forest fire out of control.
Get perspective
When you encounter a problem stop and think about it before throwing your arms into the air and sinking to your knees. Quite often, even the post dire of problems can have a simple solution so it’s worth putting things into perspective before you start wailing from the rooftops.
Take a breath and think about what is going on. Is the issue worth getting so worked up about or is it just you that is making it seem worse.
How you manage situations can help dictate the drama level. Behaving in a calm responsible manner can easily bring tensions down and leave tempers un-frayed and nerves decidedly less jangled.
Many people revel in the drama as it does have a high tension feel to it. This tension however is not conducive to healthy feeling and will make issues harder to resolve as you will not be in the right frame of mind.
Don’t feed others drama
Just as you are trying to wean yourself off drama that you personally create you need to avoid diving into other peoples drama and helping their situation become worse.
When you meet a few people together who have the drama tendency then it’s common to see them each feeding each others sense of drama.
I used to work in a manufacturing environment with a large workforce and when there was a dramatic situation it spread like wildfire across the manufacturing floor and you would often see a few individuals running from person to person spreading it around and egging everyone on.
By feeding other peoples drama you are not helping, if you are in a work environment all you are doing it helping to make it a hostile, negative and toxic place to work. We spend a lot of our time at work so it needs to be as positive and friendly as possible.
Isolate from other drama queens
There may be times when you can avoid the drama but you cannot avoid the drama queens. When this happens you need to isolate yourself from them as well as best you can.
If they are in your personal life then that’s quite easy to build that distance. You stop hanging around with them or you be up front with them that you won’t tolerate their negative behavior so you will avoid them.
If you are at work then it can be more difficult. If you work directly with drama queens then try to steer topics towards pleasant things. Avoid feeding their drama with a topic change if possible or silence if not.
You can isolate yourself during breaks by getting a book or listening to some music. The key is to get as much distance from it as possible. You see recovering alcoholics avoiding alcoholic friends and not going to bars. Do the same thing but for drama instead.
Build your self esteem
Your drama may come from feeling like you are unworthy of peoples attention unless you are right up in their faces with a highly charged dramatic scene.
Gossiping about others is a drama queen trait and the spreading of gossip may be seen by drama queens as an important public service but in actuality it’s usually seen as the opposite.
Negative feedback about gossiping or drama can often make the perpetrator feel lesser about themselves so they often double down and get worse rather than better.
By working on your low self esteem you can then see the drama for what it is and put a stop to it. You will see that your value as a person comes from within. People want to be with you because of your personality and your personal traits rather than how much drama you can generate from scratch.
Lose the victim mentality
One of the key ways you can stop being so dramatic is to lose your constant victim status. Take control of yourself by introspection. Check to see where you can improve in life and to make yourself a better person.
If you make mistakes then take ownership and look at ways to correct the issue rather than try to make a big deal out of it and apportion blame to everyone apart from yourself.
At times things may not actually be your fault but you can still take ownership and grow as a person from it.
For example. Imagine you are performing a task at work and it turned out to be wrong. You weren’t trained how to do it but you thought you knew what to do when asked by your boss.
The mistake rears its head but instead of blaming everyone and complaining you were not trained you could say “Oh, I thought I had this under control but I made a mistake. I didn’t know we needed training for this. Let’s make sure that going forward people get trained before doing this job, starting with me.”
You took ownership for the mistake and highlighted an issue with procedures without apportioning blame directly. Use issues as a chance to learn and empower yourself.
Nobody likes perpetual victims so don’t be one.
In conclusion:
You can easily diffuse situations before you start them by taking some time to think about the issue and how you need to deal with it. Your road to success can be littered with temptation from other drama queens to stop getting caught up in it. Be the better man and walk away. When you are in the midst of an issue use it as a chance to take ownership and use it for self-improvement.
