Mental Yoga

Today after a highly irritating waste of time at the Citibank in Colombia, I walked the block back to my office and tried to hide my fuming emotions by setting down to work and blasting some music on my earphones. When Giovanni asked me what was wrong, I knew that explaining the entire situation would just make me more irritated and fume even more. Besides, it's not like I really deserved a "oh you poor thing;" all banks are like that in Colombia. If you manage to get in and out in less than 30 minutes, you should call yourself lucky. So instead of complaining and explaining the whole story, I simply said that I was really ticked at the bank, but I would get over it soon. I am normally someone who gets frustrated easily and any place where I have to stand in line for over 5 minutes is just wasting my time. But being down here in South America has actually taught me that (as cliche as it sounds) there are more important things in life than getting mad, ruining my day, and probably the day of whoever I yell at, and wasting that energy when I could just let it go. Let it go. I was on the verge of yelling at the Citibank lady who told me to get in the wrong line, who gave me the wrong paper (and even as I'm writing this, it really wasn't THAT extreme, but it just felt like it), but instead I decided to keep my angry thoughts to myself, to breathe deeply, practice the type of breathing I had just used that morning during my yoga practice, and just not let this small hiccup in my day get to me. And though it took me a little while to get over it, I didn't shout at anyone and I was cordial (enough) to the person attending me.

I say I've learned this type of technique more here in Colombia because customer service is abysmal in this country but no one seems to worry about it. They just go along with it. On the one hand this is not acceptable, and I make it my duty when necessary to make people aware that they deserve better treatment. But most of the time, it is not worth the energy to get all riled up over something so trivial, not only frustrating yourself, but putting a damper on the day of the other people who you touch. Of course it is taking me some time actually put this mantra into practice. I do try to breathe deeply and think about something else when I get in that kind of frustrating situation, but then again, how can I help teach Colombians the importance of customer service if I don't make myself heard once in a while? ;)