“I return to the fact that the aim and purpose of practice is to immerse ourselves so completely in life that we are life itself living. Given this, we are daily at the crossroads, trying to turn our heaviness into light.”
— Mark Nepo
The Endless Practice: Becoming Who We Were Born To Be
I threw a real doozy of an angry fit recently. Imagine that.
Has this ever happened to you? A friend of mine pulled my chain with what felt like a caustic email and I had a less-than-kind reaction. I did NOT, however, hit the send key with my initial response (give me a little credit here; something kept me in check).
We all know email communication is difficult at best, but do you know what our biggest communication problem is?
The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply. (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
The whole email incident caused me to notice my behavior. We’re all going to have those testy moments. I’m not exempt from having nasty feelings, nor are you. It’s a bummer but it’s part of the human condition. The question is, what do we do with them and how does “listening to understand” change things?
How do you handle those angry moments?
Here’s what I did. I:
1) sent back a reasonable response (I care about this person and our relationship). Whatever I sent in reply must have sat well with her, for she later complimented me on my graciousness and admitted her tantrum.
2) practiced being human by letting myself rant and rave, feeling the anger and acknowledging the pain I felt.
3) went for a walk with my sweetie, who is practicing being a better listener and did the empathy-response thing.
4) then went to church where we listened to a sermon on—you’re gonna love this—Anger. By getting quiet and listening to the wisdom of Jim Rigby, I realized there must have been something going on in my friend’s life that caused her to be so snippy.
What did I learn? Rather than trying to disguise feelings, the self-compassionate thing was to experience and learn from them. I’m practicing becoming who I was born to be, which means experiencing life fully – including the tantrums and their lessons. Oddly enough, that level of self-compassion moves me into “listening to understand” rather than to reply.
There’s a huge sigh of relief in there somewhere…and a whole lot of gratitude.
Care to reply?
Perfect prescription. I’m going to print it out, put it in my purse so I can medicate myself with it next time my anger is triggered. Oh, maybe need to tattoo it to my arm so it will be ready for me fast enough.
I can’t stop laughing…
I hope it wasn’t my comma edits that set you off!
Nice meditation , Jeanne!
No, it wasn’t you. You and your commas rock!
This came at just the right time for me. Have been dealing with some major anger in my life and this helped me focus. Most of the time I can use different ways to work through the anger without lobbing it right back to the person that I first encountered. Getting honest with myself is the most important way to deal. Being present in my life sometimes seems like a lot of work, but then checking out never worked so well.. Ahhhhh Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jeanne. I truly miss the guidance from Jim Rigby. Would love a chance to talk to him lately.
Really appreciated your comments, Beulah. Being present in our lives IS a lot of work, isn’t it! I’m glad you pointed out though, that checking out isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Thank God for the wisdom and guidance of good friends like Jim Rigby (and you!).
Just the perfect “Mercury Retrograde” blog. Communication stressed by intergalactic forces while we snip and whine on the earth plain.
Live long and prosper. May the Force be with you. May all your tulips be pink. And may you remember never to eat yellow snow. I miss you.
Ah, the art of listening. I like it. I sometimes literally press my tongue to the roof of my mouth so I don’t interrupt someone when they are speaking. And as for anger, never put anything in writing you wouldn’t want on the front page of the NY Times! Thanks for sharing.