Maturity

Check Your Emotions

Check Your Emotions

Everything is not always going to go your way.  When things fail to go your way, don’t try to force the environment in which you’re situated to be dominated by your negative mood.  People are not always going to do what you want them to do.  You have to learn to control your emotions.

You will not always get your way.

While many adults make a serious effort to teach children that they will not always get their way, many adults need to be taught the same thing.

Don’t “fly off the handle” simply because people don’t respond in a tone that is exactly the kind of tone you desire.

When you have unacceptable mood swings, swing your attitude immediately in the direction of your lips and bust yourself in the mouth with it (your attitude).  If you want to hurt someone with your attitude, hurt yourself.  It’s unfair to take your emotions out on those who don’t deserve to feel the stinging effects of your reckless emotions.  If your emotions change with the wind, you will find that people are not going to want to be around you, and they will remember how terrible you treated them when you feel like being in a good mood.

The world does not revolve around you.  People are not placed on this planet to please and serve you.  Before you get an attitude with someone about much ado about nothing, try to consider the things that person may be going through and how they don’t need you imposing your nasty attitude on them.

Even people who claim to be considerate of others and claim to live an honorable life, they still need to do a daily self-assessment to make sure their not making everything about themselves.

You need to be sure that you’re not taking everything so personally.

Check your attitude.  Check your words.  Check your actions.  Check yourself.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Sometimes You Need to Cry
Black Man Crying

I’m not shame to cry in front of you!

Many people see crying as a weakness.  You’re going to face times in your life when you will need to cry.  It’s healthy for you to cry occasionally.  When you allow yourself to let the tears roll down your face, this can be a moment of emotional and psychic cleansing.  This moment can also provide you with the clarity you need in your life.  Do not, however, allow crying to become your answer to all of your problems—let it be a part of the process of how you deal with many of your problems.

Even for those of you who say you don’t need to cry sometimes, it’s time to stop fooling yourself—you need to cry also!  Don’t let your “tough guy” persona or “strong woman” persona cause you to end up at the nearest insane asylum.  Life presents us with many heartbreaking and vexing experiences.  We have to be wise in our response to those experiences.  Shedding tears during the process of handling heartbreaking and vexing experiences can be cathartic.  Your tears have the potential to help you to see that things are going to be okay and a brighter day will come.

Your tears can cause you to engage in the critical thinking you’ve not given yourself time to do.

In no way am I advocating for us to turn into a nation of crybabies.  When you overly rely on crying, you end up losing the power of engaging in an appropriate amount of crying.  You can make yourself seriously ill by crying too much.  You will find that crying about everything will result in you feeling quite depressed often.  Crying is not a solution to your most challenging problems.  It is, however, a part of the process of successfully addressing many of your most challenging problems and it’s crucial to the healing process.

Have you every cried yourself to sleep?  Did you wake up feeling better the next morning?  I’m sure you felt at least somewhat better, considering your tears allowed you to release some of the emotion invested in what led you to cry in the first place.

If you experience a moment in public where you have to cry, don’t feel horrible about it.  Your emotions are your emotions.  You can always quickly excuse yourself to a restroom or private area (if one is available).

Recognizing that you don’t have to be afraid to cry in front of people is recognizing it’s great to be yourself.  If you’re too embarrassed to cry in front of people, you’re too embarrassed to simply be yourself.  What a shame!

People are going to do things to you that will make you cry.  Your enemies are going to do things to you that are going to make you cry.  Don’t think you’re weak when you feel compelled to cry.  Your crying is going to assist you in defeating the negative things that made you cry.

When you feel the need to cry, go ahead and do it!  Crying can be a vehicle for liberating yourself!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Own Your Frustrations

Don’t take your frustrations out on others.  If there are specific people causing you to be frustrated, then direct your anger toward those individuals—not everyone else.  You have to learn how to take control of your emotions.  Your emotions are your emotions.  Don’t force everyone around you to have to deal with your problems.  When you’re having an unpleasant day, you shouldn’t try to make everybody else have an unpleasant day.  We can learn a significant amount about ourselves when we begin to think critically about how we handle being frustrated.  Just because you’re frustrated doesn’t give you valid justification to make drastic decisions.  When many people get frustrated, they start to acting like it’s the end of the world.

You have to understand that things are not going to go well for you every day.  If you’re an adult and claim to be mature, then you shouldn’t have to be told that everything is not always going to go well for you.

It’s okay to be frustrated from time to time—being frustrated is a normal part of the human experience.  You shouldn’t be frustrated all of the time, however.  If you’re frustrated all of the time, then you need to seek professional mental health treatment.  People should not shy away from getting mental health treatment.  One of the fundamental purposes of mental health treatment is to empower you with the ability to be in more control of yourself.

Don’t allow a frustrating day to become a serious crisis.  You have to understand that some things will happen and you will need to move on from those things.  Sitting around having a pity party is not going to change anything about your frustrations—it will only make things worse.  It’s very unattractive for you to resort to the most extreme measures when you’re going through frustrating moments.  People will begin to think that it’s best for them to not be around you.  You don’t want people to isolate themselves from you simply because you fly off the handle every time you’re frustrated.

Learn how to handle your problems responsibly.  If you need assistance with conflict resolution, please seek professional assistance.  You may even find it useful to speak with mature and successful people around you who can give you counseling about how to better deal with conflicts in your life.  If you’re always overreacting to problems you have in your life, then there’s something truly wrong with you mentally.  It’s okay to admit that you have mental problems.  By admitting that you have mental problems, you can get the help you need to address those problems.

Again, we all have been frustrated before.  Of course, we all would love to never experience frustration.  However, we know that we can never eliminate experiencing frustration.  How we respond to frustration is much more important than being frustrated.  Acting responsibly and maturely when you’re frustrated can help you to develop into a better person and allow you to discover things about yourself you didn’t even know.

Make every effort to stay in control of your emotions. Stop overacting.  Live responsibly.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Act Like You Have Children

Too many adults who have children behave in very immature ways that do not set a positive example for their children.  The level of maturity of many of these adults with children makes it difficult to believe they actually have children.  The reality is, however, almost anyone can have a child, but it takes committed, mature, and selfless people to be quality parents.  One would think that once people have reached adulthood they would evince the normative maturity indicative of adulthood.  Unfortunately, too many adults still do many of the same immature things they did as children in elementary, middle, and high school.  Sometimes one has to wonder why God would even allow immature people to bring precious new life into the world, especially when these immature people are going to be responsible for taking care of precious new life.

When you make the decision to have children, you need to understand that your immaturity should end with the discovery that you will now be a new parent.  If you knew you weren’t ready for children, then you shouldn’t have had unprotected sex.  It’s not like you didn’t know unprotected sex leads to pregnancy.

Women, when you decide to have a baby with a man who you know is no good, then you should be ready to suffer the consequences of having to rear the baby alone.  Before you start promulgating all of your frustrations about the challenges of rearing a child as a single mother, think about the foolish decision you made to have a baby with a man you knew was no good before he even inserted his penis in you.  You should have never been under any illusions that having a baby with a no good man was going to change how he acts—no matter what he told you before and/or while you were having the sexual encounter that led to you becoming pregnant.

Men, don’t have babies that you know that you don’t want.  Don’t have babies with women just to attempt to prove your masculinity or hypermasculinity.  One would like to think that bringing a child into the world would cause you to change the way that you act and think.  It would be nice to see you become a much more responsible person when you have a child.  However, many of you continue to allow your own selfish priorities to take precedent over the more important responsibilities that accompany the arrival of your child into the world.  Grow up fast!

If you want to be a real mother and father to your children, you must make a conscious choice to become more mature.  The last thing a new baby needs to be greeted with when arriving out of his or her mother’s womb is immature parents.  Now, you would think that a woman who has carried a child in her womb for nine months would act mature for her child, but many women don’t even begin to change their immature behavior while they are pregnant and after they have given birth.

When you are the mother of a child, you shouldn’t be on Facebook trying to start fights with people.  You should not be spending more time on Facebook than you do rearing your child.  Your Facebook statuses should not be bringing shame to your child.  It would seem that you would think about how you are presenting yourself as a woman when you are using social media.  The way in which you present yourself on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media vehicles can be significantly harmful to your ability to secure employment or advance in your career.  You never know who may view what you have said and/or posted on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

If you are Facebook friends with your parents, you ought to have enough respect for your parents to conduct yourself in a way that demonstrates good character, maturity, and a sense that you have good values.

If you made a mistake and had a baby with one man that you already knew was no good before you had the baby with him, then it’s just stupid to go and have a second, third, fourth, and so on with more no good men and/or the same no good man you had your first child with who has not changed at all.

Although it can be quite unsettling, unnerving, and may even temporarily unhouse you, you need to engage in some deep self-evaluations about why you’re not acting like the responsible adult you should be for your children.  Don’t try to pretend like you’re happy when you know you’re not.  Try to get to the root of what prevents you from being truly happy.  If you know that much of your immaturity stems from low self-esteem, then you need to seek the help you know you need to boost your self-esteem.  However, boosting your self-esteem does not mean getting on Facebook and other social media sites and distracting yourself from the deep internal and external problems you’re experiencing.

If you’re not willing to change for the better for yourself, please change for the benefit of your children.  Your children deserve for you to be at your best.  Be responsible.  Be thoughtful.  Be selfless.  Be mature.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison