Tuesday. 4 pm. Jonas pulls into the Whole Foods parking lot, thinking about his shopping list and wondering if there’s anything he forgot to write down. He cruises down an aisle looking for an open spot. From the corner of his eye he sees the flash of reverse lights, backward motion, the rear end of a Subaru coming right at him. Everything goes into that strange slow motion where he can see exactly what’s about to happen but there’s nothing he can do about it. Jonas slams on the brakes only because that’s what his brain tells his foot to do but it doesn’t make any difference. The Subaru t-bones Jonas’s car right at the seam between the driver’s door and the rear passenger door.
The Subaru was going no more than 3 mph, but it’s enough to create a pretty good jolt and that terrible sound cars make when they crash into each other. A low thump mixed with grinding metal and crumpling plastic. The cars were going slow but Jonas’s temper goes from 0-100 in less than a second. He has to crawl across the passenger seat and climb out the other side and before his feet hit the pavement, the profanities are flying from his mouth. A teenage girl is stepping out of the Subaru, eyes like saucers, clearly shaken and not really sure what to do as Jonas comes around the front of the car, hands clenched into fists, face like a tomato, and he starts hurling the insults. “Are you a complete moron or are you still saving some for later?” and “Did your mother have any children that lived?”
Jonas may have thought of his own daughter, just a couple years away from driving age, that she might someday find herself in the same situation as the Subaru girl. He may have been grateful that no one was hurt or that the damage to his car was minimal. But Jonas isn’t thinking clearly about anything right now. Because right now he is completely consumed by anger. In fact, Jonas seems to spend more and more of his time in a state of anger and it’s impacting his quality of life. Unlike other fear-based emotions such as loneliness, insecurity, or fear, we don’t think of being angry as a form of suffering. But it most definitely is. Let’s face it, being angry is no fun.
But what is anger? Where does it come from? And what can we do about it? If you pay attention when you’re feeling angry, you’ll notice the mind is doing a few key things. I call them Emotion Rules. Like Jonas in the parking lot, most people feel anger when they perceive that they’ve been wronged in some way (getting keistered by a Subaru Outback). And there’s a perfectly good reason for that response. Like just about everything we do here at IMS, it all goes back to the nervous system.
Turns out, the nervous system’s not so good at keeping up with the times. It thinks we’re still living on the African plains a hundred thousand years ago. When the teenage girl backed into Jonas’s car, it was a shock. His nervous system was incapable of saying, There’s an inexperienced driver who’s about to make a dumb mistake. What his nervous system saw was, WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! Because the nervous system’s only job is to keep us alive. From its point of view, that Subaru was a member of an enemy tribe jumping out from the bushes, or a crocodile lunging from a pond, or a tree blowing over and crashing through the roof of our mud hut. And in those situations, anger can be very helpful. It gives us a burst of adrenaline, heightens our senses, increases our heart rate. Like many of our emotions, anger is a survival mechanism, but we weren’t meant to get stuck there once the threat has passed.
When we feel angry, we immediately go into a defensive posture. Fight or flight. And when we're fighting or we're running away from somebody or something, we're not going to be very good at producing the outcomes and results we want. Because when we're angry, the fight or flight mechanism shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for critical thinking, creative thinking, and intuition. Instead, the defensive posture puts us in the mindset of “I’m right and you’re wrong”. And from there it’s almost impossible to access feelings like compassion or gratitude or acceptance.
Another example that just about everyone has experienced at one time or another: you’re driving along, minding your own business, maybe singing along to your favorite tune, and here comes some hotshot, rides right up on your ass, then whips out into the other lane, screams past you, then cuts back in, nearly taking off your front quarter panel. Immediately your blood starts to boil. Who the hell does this jackass think he is? Driving like an idiot, he’s going to kill someone! In that moment you think you may actually be capable of murder. It never crosses your mind that maybe the guy just got a phone call that his daughter was injured and being rushed to the hospital or that his house was on fire. The anger is blocking your brain from accessing those higher functioning thoughts. Instead, you’re steeping in your own stew of self-righteousness that someone has done something wrong to you. Meanwhile, the guy that blew past you, whatever his reasons, doesn’t even know you exist.
Now, let’s be clear: There’s nothing wrong with feeling angry. I mean, if you're a human being, you're going to feel angry sometimes. It's important that we acknowledge when we feel angry and be aware it's there and allow that emotion to be present at times. But there's a point where it's going to serve us better to let go of the anger, because if we're waking up angry every single day, that's a very challenging life. If we start to pay attention, we can be in the space of whatever's happening around us and choose how we want to respond. We can look at a situation and we can acknowledge, hey, that's not creating the outcome that I want, or if this behavior continues we're not going to be able to move beyond the dynamic that's causing pain or suffering. Those things can be acknowledged without getting angry.
When anger shows up, just pay attention. How am I focusing on the situation such that I feel like I've been wronged in some way? And again, I'm not saying that something hasn't occurred that's not ideal or unacceptable. The point is we don't have to face those situations with anger. We can learn some different tactics and develop some other tools. So when we feel angry, instead of lashing out immediately, going to I'm right and they're wrong, ask the questions, Hey, what is my opinion and perception here? What is the other person’s opinion and perception here? And that will tend to help the creative thinking process so that we can move toward a feeling of acceptance and a sense of compassion, a sense of calm and peace.
What I find more often than not, is that human beings tend to want to produce the same outcome. The way they go about it might be different from you, but at the end of the day, everybody wants to know love and peace and joy in their life. So when we put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, so to speak, it creates an understanding. Understanding leads to compassion, and compassion leads to acceptance and love in a universal sense. We don't always have to agree with each other to have a sense of love and compassion for our fellow human beings. When we come to situations with the energy of compassion and acceptance, we're much more likely to produce the results that we want. We're much more likely to have the impact and create the influence in the lives of the people we love, and people we don't even know, if we’re coming from that place rather than reacting or lashing out in anger.
When that Subaru slammed into Jonas’s car, it’s not surprising his initial response was to get angry. Just about anybody would. Now the car needs to go into the shop, he needs to get a rental, he has to deal with the insurance company and all the headaches that go along with that. Even the Buddha himself might lose his shit for a minute or two. But Jonas (and the poor girl behind the wheel of the Subaru) would have been much better served had he taken a moment to acknowledge: This thing has happened, it’s going to be a huge ass pain, and I’m feeling pissed off about it. Then he can take some deep breaths to calm the nervous system and say, Hey, it was an accident. The person didn't see me. I could have paid a little better attention. Everything is okay, people are all right, let's manage the situation and move on with our lives.
With a little bit of training, a little bit of practice, we can learn to turn on compassion, acceptance, and understanding, as opposed to having that hair trigger to anger, which usually costs us the outcome and the result that we really want. It can become just as much of a reflex to immediately go to a place of understanding as it is to go to a place of anger. So if you’re ready to create some new patterns around anger, join us for a Power Series program. We’ll provide you with the tools, techniques, and strategies for recognizing when anger is present and how to shift your emotions, thoughts and nervous system toward achieving the results you’re looking for. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series and sign up today!