I regularly serve Wednesday nights at my wife's ministry and usually bring her dinner prior to the start of the event. Between getting off work, grabbing dinner, and making it to the church, I am always in a mega rush. (Not sure why, but traffic in Bloomington always seems heaviest on Wednesday afternoons!)
A few Wednesdays ago, I decided to get us Chipotle for dinner. I eat there pretty frequently, so I can recite my order in my sleep. I got stuck in line behind three college-aged kids who were taking their sweet, sweet time with their order. Getting irritated that they didn't let me go first, I quickly ordered my food and dashed over to the fountain machine to fill our drinks...
...only to accidentally spill Coke Zero all over my pants and floor.
The college kids were still there, and if I wasn't wearing my Eastview t-shirt, I had half a thought to let out a smart remark. I'm glad I didn't, though, because A) That's not very friendly, and B) They surprisingly and graciously helped me clean it up.
I tell this story mostly because it's funny in retrospect, but it helped reinforce this idea of staying chill in irritating situations. Of course, this example took place outside of work, but it just as easily could have taken place at work. This is probably an extremely obvious key competency, but I bring it up because it's surprising how often people get their feathers in a ruffle, both at work and outside of work.
Last week, my wife and I watched a movie called Asperger's Are Us following a group of guys with Asperger's who led their own comedy troupe. It was a pretty good movie. Anyway, I bring it up because one of the guys had a chart on his wall to help him with anger management, and I actually really liked it. The application definitely goes beyond folks with Asperger's, so I thought it would be good to share that here. In alliterative form, here are the "R's" of anger management.
(Side note: Upon googling "r's of anger management", apparently there are lots of different R's of anger management! They're all pretty similar, so I just picked the one I liked best.)
1. Recognizing. Just like it sounds, this is an awareness of the self where you understand that you are frustrated or irritated about a situation. Not wanting to overcomplicate this, let's go on to the next one.
2. Recollecting. Not sure I like the choice of word here, but I like the idea behind it. It's this idea that one should recall that most things aren't solved well with an angry response. Usually, we're brash beings when we're angry and don't make the best decisions then. We'll talk more about this down below.
3. Refraining / restraining via reframing. The idea here is that you hold yourself back from responding in a way you might regret later by trying to look at the situation from the other person's perspective. At the very least, you'll develop some level of empathy for the other person's perspective, and empathy leads to less anger.
4. Relinquishing. This one goes hand-in-hand with the last few "R" words. The concept here is that one "relinquishes" the desire to be angry in the understanding that anger doesn't get you anywhere. Again, that's pretty similar concept to the previously covered pieces. Moving on.
5. Reconditioning. I actually like this one a lot. This one is more of a meta concept where a person looks at all the situations where he / she got angry and looks for patterns in those situations. In other words, is there a unifying trigger that always gets you hot? If so, you can better recondition yourself to stay calm during future instances of that particular trigger.
6. Responding appropriately. And, of course, after all the other "R" words, we respond in a way that is clear and level-headed, free of the brashness that comes with hot emotions.
That's it for this post. I hope you found this to be helpful. If there's one additional thing I encourage, it's observing your own behavior. These "R" words are useless if you refuse to recognize that there is a problem. I guess that aligns well with the whole point of this blog: Leave Your Ego at the Threshold. Do it for your own sake and for your own benefit.
Last week, my wife and I watched a movie called Asperger's Are Us following a group of guys with Asperger's who led their own comedy troupe. It was a pretty good movie. Anyway, I bring it up because one of the guys had a chart on his wall to help him with anger management, and I actually really liked it. The application definitely goes beyond folks with Asperger's, so I thought it would be good to share that here. In alliterative form, here are the "R's" of anger management.
(Side note: Upon googling "r's of anger management", apparently there are lots of different R's of anger management! They're all pretty similar, so I just picked the one I liked best.)
1. Recognizing. Just like it sounds, this is an awareness of the self where you understand that you are frustrated or irritated about a situation. Not wanting to overcomplicate this, let's go on to the next one.
2. Recollecting. Not sure I like the choice of word here, but I like the idea behind it. It's this idea that one should recall that most things aren't solved well with an angry response. Usually, we're brash beings when we're angry and don't make the best decisions then. We'll talk more about this down below.
3. Refraining / restraining via reframing. The idea here is that you hold yourself back from responding in a way you might regret later by trying to look at the situation from the other person's perspective. At the very least, you'll develop some level of empathy for the other person's perspective, and empathy leads to less anger.
4. Relinquishing. This one goes hand-in-hand with the last few "R" words. The concept here is that one "relinquishes" the desire to be angry in the understanding that anger doesn't get you anywhere. Again, that's pretty similar concept to the previously covered pieces. Moving on.
5. Reconditioning. I actually like this one a lot. This one is more of a meta concept where a person looks at all the situations where he / she got angry and looks for patterns in those situations. In other words, is there a unifying trigger that always gets you hot? If so, you can better recondition yourself to stay calm during future instances of that particular trigger.
6. Responding appropriately. And, of course, after all the other "R" words, we respond in a way that is clear and level-headed, free of the brashness that comes with hot emotions.
That's it for this post. I hope you found this to be helpful. If there's one additional thing I encourage, it's observing your own behavior. These "R" words are useless if you refuse to recognize that there is a problem. I guess that aligns well with the whole point of this blog: Leave Your Ego at the Threshold. Do it for your own sake and for your own benefit.
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