People blame tiredness for their poor choices. The end of the year seems to be a busy time for lots of people, but so is the beginning of the year and so are other parts of the year. Let’s face it, we are always busy, we just need to manage our emotions and keep in mind our actions towards others and when events don’t go as we planned.
If a small child is having a tantrum people often say it is because they are tired. Could it also be because their home boundaries are confusing for the child? And a myriad of other reasons? A student fails their exam and tells everyone it was because they were tired or was it because of many other reasons including being disorganised?
Tiredness is also put with other words to make the reason more justifiable:
tired and cranky
tired and sore/sick
tired and fed-up
It seems if we put tired with other words then our actions are justified? It is like we can’t help being tired. Well, we can, so either we make better decisions, when we know we are stressed and have a lot going on, or keep just being rude and cranky and justifying it because we are TIRED!
Communication is a complex process and if someone is tired it is optimal if they realise this and do their best to tailor their conversations and actions to suit. Calmly saying to someone: “please can we talk about this later because I am not in a good frame of mind” is much better than yelling and screaming and blaming it on tiredness. Similarly, keep conversations short and being aware of your fragile state is also a very positive option.
Daily careful planning needs to take place and this is a difficult task. Some people can be slack at planning, but be lucky when tiredness sets in, because they do not lose sight of other skills they can use to make the situation easier. However, not everyone can do this once they are exhausted, so pre-organisation and pre-thoughts, on how we want to be, is crucial.
The funny thing is at the end of the week people can still stay out partying when they are tired and the next day guess what – yes tired again. So, if we keep blaming tiredness for our communication choices and our actions we will not take responsibility for our interactions with others. So let us all pledge to be more considerate, respectful, thoughtful, thankful, gracious, pleasant, calm, non-judgmental, patient, friendly, agreeable, kind, careful, charming, engaging, helpful etc. If we have an unpleasant happening or interaction let’s look more closely at what we can change and stop blaming it on being TIRED!
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