Qualy #116 - Dealing with anger in spots where you know it's coming
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Summary
In this bonus episode of The Qualies, I sit down with a good friend of mine to talk about anger and how to deal with it. We talk about what anger is, why it's toxic, and what to do about it.
Transcript
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Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atiyah Qualies, a member exclusive podcast.
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The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for qualification round, which is something you
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do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions,
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topics, and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of The Drive.
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So if you enjoy the Qualies, you can access dozens more of them through our membership
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program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's Qualies.
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I think it was in one of your lessons, but it might've been in a podcast where you talk
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about, imagine you're playing a video game and it's the same video game every time. And
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you always get killed by the same monster at the same part of the maze or whatever it is.
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And I think about that a lot every time I falter at predictably, you know, known, understood
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things that get under my skin. And it's very discouraging, right? It's sort of like a, there
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are like a dozen things that I just know if they happen. So, I mean, one of them is there's
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certain types of questions that if I'm asked really irk me. You know, when people ask questions
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that are to which the answer is very complicated, but they ask through the lens of just give me the
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one word answer, that just irks me. Like, I don't know why it just bugs the shit out of me.
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And I know that. And yet over and over again, I find myself getting upset when that happens.
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And I feel like the guy that you're describing in the video game.
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You're losing the boss fight at the same place every time.
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Every single time. I know where the boogeyman is. I know what weapon he's going to use to kill me.
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And I just walk over there and out comes the machete and I'm dead. And then I'm back to the
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starting block again. And I'm one, one fewer lives in the game. Right.
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Mm-hmm. But you can recover faster each time you lose. Getting angry is not the measure of having
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lost, right? Obviously, you can aspire to a time where you never get angry again, or you never get
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angry in certain circumstances again. But the real practice is to notice as early as possible what's
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happening and to let go of it. The difference between being angry for 10 minutes and 10 seconds
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and one second, those factors of 10 are enormous, right? And I have the same thing going on where
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anger is something that I very frequently feel. And I also notice that it totally contaminates the
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experience of people around me. So I have my wife and my daughters and my anger for them is clearly
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toxic. And I have this commitment to letting go of it the moment I can let go of it. And
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again, it's not that anger is never warranted. The energy of anger can be useful. Someone's
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attacking you on the sidewalk, you know, and you're in a self-defense situation. That's not
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the moment where I would say, get rid of all your anger as quickly as possible, right? I mean,
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there are situations where you want to use that energy. But for the most part, you want to let go of
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it very, very quickly. And then be in a position to decide what's what and whether or not it's
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appropriate to take some kind of, you know, confrontational path, whatever it is, by email
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or, you know, say the thing that would convey your displeasure or whatever. But now I have my wife and
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my daughters as a kind of feedback mechanism for me because they know my commitment. They know I can
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let go of anger on demand and they know I want to, and they don't like my anger. Right. And they
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detect it in the subtlest way. So like, I mean, it's not, it's not even anger where a normal person
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would classically think he was angry. They don't have to wait till you raise your voice. They can
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see the mannerisms in the way you might move or the way your answers become shorter or something.
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Yeah. Yeah. Or it may just, so, but like, you know, even mild frustration gets scored as, you know,
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a kind of crazy level of anger. Right. So like, if I, you know, if I say, wait a minute, I thought
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the plumber was coming today. That's like, you know, that, you know, that's a four alarm fire. Right.
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So one of my daughters will say, Ooh, daddy's getting angry. Right. And they'll say that so early now
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and it's fantastic because it's, I just let go of it way earlier than I used to. But if you can't be
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mindful, you actually have no choice. You know, you just, you will be angry as long as you're angry
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and the people around you who don't like it just have to figure out somehow to put up with you.
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So it's not that there's no other hacks. There are many other hacks and sometimes, sometimes there,
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it's important to have a hack that is more global than being simply being relentlessly mindful of
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everything that's coming up for you. Like a different understanding of a situation can offer
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some kind of firmware update to the whole operating system. And then you, you just simply don't go
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there anymore. So for instance, I mean, so you're, you're driving in traffic. There are many hacks for
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that, but one hack is just, you discover that you've got 400 hours of podcasts you want to listen
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to and you're listening to a great one and you, you're just, you're just happy to be listening.
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And the fact that you're delayed an extra half hour or whatever is fine, you know, and that's a
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totally useful hack, right? It modulates your state. You're, you're just, you're just discovering the
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silver lining to something that's, that would otherwise be negative.
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And I'll, I'll share with you another one. Cause I agree with that completely. That's a great one.
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The other one that I've taken on in the past year that has had surprising efficacy is any customer
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service experience you have that is profoundly negative. And if you fly as much as I do, you're
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pretty much guaranteed one of those a week. My friend, Jay Walker, who knows a lot about the
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aviation industry said one out of six experiences with us aviation is a customer service failure.
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Right. So anyone who flies would agree with that. But so the next time, like the flight
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attendant's rude to you or the TSA person is sweating you or being obnoxious or whatever,
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if you instead take a view of empathy, which is, God, this is a really hard job. You know,
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I mean, like I have the privilege of getting to be, you know, intellectually engaged and doing all
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of these things and boom, boom, boom. But this is a really hard job. I mean, most of the people
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that they're encountering are on some level dissatisfied. Nobody's showing up to, to their
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world happy. And so like simply taking that posture completely changes the way you interact
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with that system. Yeah. And it's interesting because it doesn't even really require a huge
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mindfulness insight. It's just sort of a, but it's a, it's a condition you want to walk in the
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situation with, right? You want to be able to walk in with that in your mind.
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Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't entail mindfulness at all. You could get the benefit of that new
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framing without ever having heard of mindfulness. So you, you know, if you do get angry, you'll be
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as angry as, as you ever were, but you have a different way of thinking about it.
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Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the Quali. New episodes of the Quali's are
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