The Tale of the Blind Ref, part 2
At the height of my anger is a terrible time to take action. (Read part 1 here)
I thought about this as I walked out of the gym after being mauled to the floor by an opposing player in a game of basketball. I wondered when things were going to return to normal in regards to my heart rate, desire to punch someone out, and my general attitude. I was really angry. Like the kind of anger that causes your feet to stomp on the ground in an apparent effort to get to China or your hands to flail at the air as the only source of wind energy in the area.
But things would not turn to normal until I started acting normal. People around me wouldn’t trust my judgment until I proved that I could be trusted. At some point, we lose control with anger, and people don’t view us as as rational, no matter what we are thinking about ourselves or no matter how justified we are to be angry.
This demonstrates the importance of my walk to the hallway. The surest way for me to be ignored when trying to get across my point was to act irrational and to do irrational things. So I left the game, and walked out the gym to the hallway. Eventually I became rational again. And that’s why the referee even talked to me in the first place.
In order for things to be normal again, I had to start acting it.
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An excellent yet classic differentiation between reaction and response. “Slow to anger” is unmastered if one simply stops with reaction. As soon as you can figure out the amount of time and reflection you need between the two to effectively manage situational anger like that, you’ve shown to have mastered that key trait.