Say, “Thank You, God,” even for the annoyances in your life. Why not? This is a good way to help annoyance leave.
The annoyance you experience is teaching you something. It could be teaching you that you pay too much attention to what gets in your way, whether it is a person or a computer or your car that won’t start. Is it possible that you give too much power to annoyances, as if they have some say over you?
When thorns prick you, perhaps you are too sensitive and make too much of them. In any case, the thing to do with annoyances is to let them go. Why keep them around in your mind to fester? Why go over them again and again in your mind? Soon enough, another appears. The last one recedes and a new one takes its place. It rankles you.
Beloveds, you reduce annoyances to size when you let go of them.
You may think of all kinds of retorts and all the unfairness of it. How fair are you to yourself when you let an annoyance rankle you?
Oh, to be free of annoyance. How lovely that would be! You would not go around being disturbed or perturbed. This is a choice that is yours. Perhaps, unwittingly, you have been a collector of annoyances. Other people have been misguided, you are sure, and they may well have been. Nevertheless, you have allowed yourself to be guided to annoyances. Who truly puts the reflections of annoyances before you? You do, beloveds, you do.
If a speck of dirt gets on your shirt-front, you flick it off. This is what you can do with all the pesky annoyances, all the things people should never have said. Flick them off. Really and truly, what do they have to do with you except as you say so? Of course, they may say so, too, yet that is their game, not yours. You don’t have to play. If you play, you must have chosen to play. Just as others, in their remarks, may not be so aware of what they are doing, so may you also be unaware of your collusion with them. How can it be that you are a co-conspirator, and, yet, what else can you be when you instantly turn over your thoughts to them and find yourself annoyed, so annoyed, so annoyed over someone else’s foolishness. This is what it comes down to, isn’t it?
There are those people from whom you want nothing but to be left alone. You don’t want their opinions of you. You don’t want their approval anymore than you want their disapproval. Who are they to set themselves up in judgment of you? That is your question, isn’t it? How dare they? They may think they are the judge and jury over you. And so you feel that they are sticking pins in you. Well, just pull those pins out, and set yourself free. After those who annoy you so much have let their remarks leave their mouth or their pen, it is you who carries it with you. It is you who gets it under your skin. It is you who keeps it going.
Find some other thoughts. Think of remarks people who love you make. This is turning the other cheek, beloveds. Think of the people who nourish you with their love and their Being.
When there is a song you don’t like, you take that one off the record player, and you put another one on. How hard is that to do?
Now that you have the idea, this is what you do. Do not accept annoyance into your life. And, if, you do, then replace annoyance with something more identifiable -- like love.