The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #116 - Dealing with anger in spots where you know it's coming

00:00:00.000 Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atiyah Qualies, a member exclusive podcast.

00:00:16.100 The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for qualification round, which is something you

00:00:20.120 do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions,

00:00:25.320 topics, and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of The Drive.

00:00:30.000 So if you enjoy the Qualies, you can access dozens more of them through our membership

00:00:33.520 program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's Qualies.

00:00:39.900 I think it was in one of your lessons, but it might've been in a podcast where you talk

00:00:44.960 about, imagine you're playing a video game and it's the same video game every time. And

00:00:51.760 you always get killed by the same monster at the same part of the maze or whatever it is.

00:00:56.480 And I think about that a lot every time I falter at predictably, you know, known, understood

00:01:04.900 things that get under my skin. And it's very discouraging, right? It's sort of like a, there

00:01:09.360 are like a dozen things that I just know if they happen. So, I mean, one of them is there's

00:01:14.980 certain types of questions that if I'm asked really irk me. You know, when people ask questions

00:01:20.140 that are to which the answer is very complicated, but they ask through the lens of just give me the

00:01:26.180 one word answer, that just irks me. Like, I don't know why it just bugs the shit out of me. 0.78

00:01:31.400 And I know that. And yet over and over again, I find myself getting upset when that happens.

00:01:38.140 Right.

00:01:38.460 And I feel like the guy that you're describing in the video game.

00:01:40.860 You're losing the boss fight at the same place every time.

00:01:43.420 Every single time. I know where the boogeyman is. I know what weapon he's going to use to kill me.

00:01:49.040 And I just walk over there and out comes the machete and I'm dead. And then I'm back to the 0.97

00:01:54.860 starting block again. And I'm one, one fewer lives in the game. Right.

00:01:58.080 Mm-hmm. But you can recover faster each time you lose. Getting angry is not the measure of having

00:02:06.380 lost, right? Obviously, you can aspire to a time where you never get angry again, or you never get

00:02:12.360 angry in certain circumstances again. But the real practice is to notice as early as possible what's

00:02:21.740 happening and to let go of it. The difference between being angry for 10 minutes and 10 seconds

00:02:28.080 and one second, those factors of 10 are enormous, right? And I have the same thing going on where

00:02:37.480 anger is something that I very frequently feel. And I also notice that it totally contaminates the

00:02:44.880 experience of people around me. So I have my wife and my daughters and my anger for them is clearly

00:02:51.240 toxic. And I have this commitment to letting go of it the moment I can let go of it. And

00:02:57.980 again, it's not that anger is never warranted. The energy of anger can be useful. Someone's

00:03:03.180 attacking you on the sidewalk, you know, and you're in a self-defense situation. That's not

00:03:07.920 the moment where I would say, get rid of all your anger as quickly as possible, right? I mean,

00:03:11.220 there are situations where you want to use that energy. But for the most part, you want to let go of

00:03:18.100 it very, very quickly. And then be in a position to decide what's what and whether or not it's

00:03:24.360 appropriate to take some kind of, you know, confrontational path, whatever it is, by email

00:03:29.740 or, you know, say the thing that would convey your displeasure or whatever. But now I have my wife and

00:03:37.560 my daughters as a kind of feedback mechanism for me because they know my commitment. They know I can

00:03:43.440 let go of anger on demand and they know I want to, and they don't like my anger. Right. And they

00:03:50.920 detect it in the subtlest way. So like, I mean, it's not, it's not even anger where a normal person

00:03:59.400 would classically think he was angry. They don't have to wait till you raise your voice. They can

00:04:03.780 see the mannerisms in the way you might move or the way your answers become shorter or something.

00:04:10.480 Yeah. Yeah. Or it may just, so, but like, you know, even mild frustration gets scored as, you know,

00:04:17.200 a kind of crazy level of anger. Right. So like, if I, you know, if I say, wait a minute, I thought

00:04:21.960 the plumber was coming today. That's like, you know, that, you know, that's a four alarm fire. Right.

00:04:28.180 So one of my daughters will say, Ooh, daddy's getting angry. Right. And they'll say that so early now

00:04:33.520 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

00:04:41.480 mindful, you actually have no choice. You know, you just, you will be angry as long as you're angry

00:04:46.840 and the people around you who don't like it just have to figure out somehow to put up with you.

00:04:53.900 So it's not that there's no other hacks. There are many other hacks and sometimes, sometimes there,

00:05:00.280 it's important to have a hack that is more global than being simply being relentlessly mindful of

00:05:07.620 everything that's coming up for you. Like a different understanding of a situation can offer

00:05:14.000 some kind of firmware update to the whole operating system. And then you, you just simply don't go

00:05:20.100 there anymore. So for instance, I mean, so you're, you're driving in traffic. There are many hacks for

00:05:25.680 that, but one hack is just, you discover that you've got 400 hours of podcasts you want to listen

00:05:31.340 to and you're listening to a great one and you, you're just, you're just happy to be listening.

00:05:35.900 And the fact that you're delayed an extra half hour or whatever is fine, you know, and that's a

00:05:41.800 totally useful hack, right? It modulates your state. You're, you're just, you're just discovering the

00:05:46.760 silver lining to something that's, that would otherwise be negative.

00:05:49.300 And I'll, I'll share with you another one. Cause I agree with that completely. That's a great one.

00:05:52.720 The other one that I've taken on in the past year that has had surprising efficacy is any customer

00:05:59.680 service experience you have that is profoundly negative. And if you fly as much as I do, you're

00:06:05.560 pretty much guaranteed one of those a week. My friend, Jay Walker, who knows a lot about the

00:06:10.580 aviation industry said one out of six experiences with us aviation is a customer service failure.

00:06:16.940 Right. So anyone who flies would agree with that. But so the next time, like the flight

00:06:22.040 attendant's rude to you or the TSA person is sweating you or being obnoxious or whatever,

00:06:27.280 if you instead take a view of empathy, which is, God, this is a really hard job. You know,

00:06:35.360 I mean, like I have the privilege of getting to be, you know, intellectually engaged and doing all

00:06:40.220 of these things and boom, boom, boom. But this is a really hard job. I mean, most of the people

00:06:44.260 that they're encountering are on some level dissatisfied. Nobody's showing up to, to their

00:06:49.680 world happy. And so like simply taking that posture completely changes the way you interact

00:06:56.580 with that system. Yeah. And it's interesting because it doesn't even really require a huge

00:07:00.980 mindfulness insight. It's just sort of a, but it's a, it's a condition you want to walk in the

00:07:06.240 situation with, right? You want to be able to walk in with that in your mind.

00:07:09.440 Yeah. It's a framing effect.

00:07:10.600 Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't entail mindfulness at all. You could get the benefit of that new

00:07:15.900 framing without ever having heard of mindfulness. So you, you know, if you do get angry, you'll be

00:07:21.240 as angry as, as you ever were, but you have a different way of thinking about it.

00:07:25.720 Yeah. The combination of these is powerful.

00:07:27.440 Yeah.

00:07:28.360 Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the Quali. New episodes of the Quali's are

00:07:33.600 released Tuesday through Friday each week and are published exclusively on our private member only

00:07:39.080 podcast feed. If you're interested in hearing more as well as receiving all of the other member

00:07:43.320 exclusive benefits, you can visit peteratiamd.com forward slash subscribe. This podcast is for general

00:07:50.800 informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other

00:07:55.320 professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor patient

00:08:01.040 relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to this podcast is at the

00:08:06.840 user's own risk. The content on this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional

00:08:12.320 medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical

00:08:19.260 advice from any medical condition they have, and they should seek the assistance of their healthcare

00:08:24.280 professionals for any such conditions. Finally, I take conflicts of interest very seriously for all of my

00:08:31.960 disclosures and the companies I invest in or advise. Please visit peteratiamd.com forward slash about

00:08:39.580 where I keep an up-to-date and active list of such companies.

The Peter Attia Drive - February 21, 2020

Qualy #116 - Dealing with anger in spots where you know it's coming

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript