Tempers, man.  We’ve all got buttons that can be pushed and our fuses are only so long.  In early 2019 bags of dicks abound, sprinkled generously throughout society, which gives ample opportunity for even the most zen amongst us to blow a lid from time to time and feel some righteous anger.

I’ve been trying to work on my temper lately.  For the record, I am not an unusually angry person, nor do I feel like I have an unusually quick temper. Compared to my peers in the construction industry I’m near saint level with my restraint and ability to remain level-headed.  When compared to Mrs. Burrito Bowl, however, I can see there is room for improvement.

In working on my overall temper my three goals are 1) lengthen my fuse, 2) flatten the peak, and 3) shorten the duration.   Generally speaking, I want to work on my temper because I want to decrease my overall stress. This is not for some higher calling reason of wanting to be a better person.  My reasons are completely self-serving.  Being angry increases my stress and I want to decrease my stress.

Through a combination of dumb luck and willfully paying attention I’ve stumbled upon a pretty good way to help me keep my emotions in check.  Maybe they’ll work you.

How Can You Keep From Losing Your Sh!t?

Telling myself not to get upset at something doesn’t help anything.  I can tell myself all the livelong-day to not lose my temper, but when that idiot cuts me off in traffic for no other reason than he’s an idiot dumb sh*t bag, it doesn’t matter.

Instead of just telling myself NOT to be upset, I’ve started asking myself WHY I’m upset.  The best I can tell, one of the main reasons I start to get upset can be boiled down to feeling disrespected.  Feeling disrespected can boil down even further into an underlying feeling of insecurity.  I don’t want to talk about my insecurities though, so let’s focus on feeling disrespected.

We’ve all found ourselves riled up in traffic.  A combination of stresses has lead us to almost continually function on our last nerves when suddenly someone cuts us off.  Why does that make us angry?  There’s no helpful reason for us to be angry.  It’s not like showing up 1/10th of a second late to wherever we were going is going to make a difference.

Them cutting us off should have virtually no lasting ramifications for our day, yet we can find ourselves so mad that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

Notice The Why

The first step to decreasing anger related stress is to notice why you’re getting upset in the first place.  Not in the “Come on man, this isn’t a big deal, why are you getting upset?” type of way.  I mean notice the actual reason why you’re feeling upset.  Don’t try to stop yourself from being upset, just notice why you’re feeling upset.

Don’t stop at the most obvious reason.  Keep going until you get to the root cause. Keep asking yourself ‘why’ until you get to the basement level reason.  The situation is someone cut me off.  I’m not mad they had to merge, and I’m not mad that I had to quickly move my foot from the gas to the break.  I’m not mad at the amount of extra time it will take to get where I’m going.  There’s no physical reason why I should be upset.  When you get right down to it, I’m mad because I felt disrespected.

Understand It’s Not About You

So the first step is to get to the root cause of why you’re upset.  The second step is to understand that it’s not about you.  When someone cuts you off in traffic you don’t know their motives.  There could be a million reasons why their car ended up directly in front of your car and almost none of those reasons have anything to do with you.

We all have these complex lives we’re trying to manage.  When you start to feel disrespected in a situation, remind yourself that it isn’t about you.  People are just going about their lives, they aren’t paying attention to you.  No one is out there purposefully cutting you off.  People are just trying to get to work on time.

When someone treats you poorly fight the urge to feel personally disrespected.  Instead, think about what it would take in your life for you to act like they’re acting.  You would have to be having an incredibly hard day to provide as poor of customer service as they’re providing to you.  Maybe they aren’t a bad person, maybe they’re just having a regrettable day.

Instead of letting it ruin your day, try your best to have compassion on them.  I’m preaching to myself here.

How We Handle Our Anger Dictates How Long We Stay Angry

I needed gas the other day.  In Oregon we have jobs where people pump your gas.  It’s unnecessary for that job to exist because almost anyone who can drive can also pump their own gas.  For someone who grew up pumping my own gas it’s especially irksome to have to wait for the attendant, especially if they aren’t busy.

Generally speaking gas station attendants aren’t the cream of the crop of the workforce.  It’s not uncommon to find yourself waiting for them to get to your car, not because they’re busy, but because they’re showing absolutely no hustle.  This isn’t always the case as some gas station attendants work incredibly hard.  Some, however, are seemingly on their first job and don’t seem to care how long it takes for them to walk over.

As I pulled up to the pump nobody was around to pump the gas.  I looked in the store and noticed a few people talking.  I felt myself starting to get mildly upset because it was a waste of my time to sit there and wait for someone to do a job that really doesn’t need to exist other than for the sole purpose of creating jobs.

Because I’m working on my temper, and I had nothing better to do, I tried to identify why I felt mildly annoyed.  Was the extra few minutes going to make me late for something important? Not really, I was on my way home from work.

I was potentially being disrespected.

That was it.  I was starting to get upset because I felt like some punk kid was inside chatting with his buddies rather than being ready to do the job he was being paid to do.  Granted, I wasn’t 100% sure this was the case, but it wouldn’t have been the first time.

I was the only car waiting on gas.  Was the gas station attendant inside chit-chatting?  Maybe he saw my car wasn’t fancy and purposefully decided to ignore me.  Was I not important enough, because of how beat up my car is, for him to give his best customer service?

I decided to wait patiently and psychoanalyze my feelings rather than get bent out of shape.  After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably less than 30-seconds, the gas station attendant came running out holding a soda and a bag of chips.  He set his drink in his work office and apologized for the wait.

At that moment I had two choices.

Option one, I could say some snide remark about how it took him long enough to get out here and how I don’t have all day to wait around.  Doing this would have made us both angry.  He would feel disrespected because from his view he’d been pumping gas all day for no thanks and when he finally tried to get something to drink some jerk pulled up and started yelling at him for not being outside.

It would have made for an awkward few minutes while he stood there waiting for my tank to fill.

I would have felt bad but I’d have masked my shame over being a jerk by feigning anger over his poor customer service.  He would have felt bad and angry because another customer snapped at him.

I went with option two.  He apologized for the wait and I said, “No worries,” and smiled at him.

Instantly, any anger I had over waiting was gone.

He wasn’t disrespecting me, he was thirsty.  It wasn’t about me.  He remedied his mortal sin of needing liquid by running out to my car, no doubt expecting me to give him an earful.

Because of how I responded to that small inconvenience we both left the interaction in a much better mood than we could have left it.  Instead of focusing on how I had to wait, I chose to appreciate his hustle.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Showing hustle made it much easier for me to go with option two.  I could tell he didn’t mean to waste my time.  Even if he had slowly walked out to me and provided poor customer service throughout, my best course of action would still be kindness.

I was lucky enough to be taught the value of hustle and having a strong work ethic.  Maybe he wasn’t lucky enough to be taught those lessons.  Maybe he already feels poorly about himself for being a gas station attendant when his dreams for himself are so different.  He might not need to be beaten down, he might need to be lifted up.  What I do know is a smile and kindness from me will serve him better than a snide remark.

Did he deserve to get yelled at or did he deserve grace and a smile?  He may have been inside goofing off all day, routinely making customers wait. Or, he may have been busting his ass all day and I just happened to be the one customer he wasn’t immediately ready for.  I had no idea, and no way of knowing.

If You Want to Lessen Your Anger, Give Others the Benefit of the Doubt

The third step is to give others the benefit of the doubt.  Whether he was the worst worker in Portland or one of the best, if I had chosen to yell at him I would have been the one to pay the price.  I would have left angry.

I don’t share that story to brag about my kindness.  There have been plenty of times (probably the majority) where I have said the snide remark to someone or let myself get upset with them.  No doubt I could have convinced myself that he really WAS disrespecting me.

I share the story because I was amazed how quickly any frustrations I had vanished as soon as I showed kindness.  I asked myself why I was starting to get upset and identified I felt disrespected having to wait for him to pump my gas when they weren’t busy.

Then I rationalized that it wasn’t about me.  He was thirsty, he wasn’t purposefully making me wait.

Third, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he WAS purposefully making me wait.  Assuming the worst doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t teach him not to do it.  Whether or not it made any difference to him, being kind helped me immediately rid myself of any negative feelings about the situation.

We can’t control how we’re treated.  Situations will happen that make us angry.  What keeps us angry is how we respond to them.

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