This week’s tool is one I teach to my guys in jail. It is a very powerful tool and you don’t have to understand how it works to see results. Just follow the steps.
Often the emotions we feel seem to come out of nowhere, but that is not really how it happens. In the split second before we feel the emotions there is always a thought. This tool will teach you how to find that thought and how that knowledge is then a powerful aid to changing how much emotion shows up.
The examples below deal with anger, but the tool can be used for any negative emotion we are working on changing.
Every situation seems to be made up of three parts:
- Stimulus: We see something happening or someone doing something.
- Response: We respond to it.
- Outcome: There is an outcome to our actions.
Here are a few simple reactions:
- The phone rings.
- We answer it.
- We have a conversation.
- A car is driving down the road.
- We move out of the way.
- We are safe.
- A friend is waving at us from across the room.
- We see them but return to our work.
- They feel frustrated because we didn’t wave back.
In reality there is another step that happens so quickly that we don’t even realize it. In the split second between the stimulus and the response there is a thought. Most of the time it happens so quickly that we don’t realize it is there. Look at our three examples with the thought added.
- The phone rings.
- Thought: Someone is calling me.
- We answer it.
- We have a conversation.
- A car is driving down the road.
- Thought: I am in danger.
- We move out of the way.
- We are safe.
- A friend is waving at us from across the room.
- Thought: I really don’t have time to deal with him right now!
- We see them but return to our work.
- They feel frustrated because we didn’t wave back.
In the three examples above it is easy to recognize what the thought is between the stimulus and action but, as you will see, that is not always the case.
There is a specific reason for why it is important for us to figure out what the thought is between the stimulus and the action. When we spend time looking back at past events to figure out what the thought was, we literally rewire our brain by creating a new connection between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The more often we do this the stronger this new path between the conscious and unconscious mind will become.
The new path we create is very useful because it slows down our responses. Those thoughts that happen so quickly that we aren’t conscious of them taking place now happen in such a way that we are aware that we have a choice so that our emotional response is no longer unconscious.
In many cases this might not feel like that big of a deal. When the phone rings, it doesn’t matter whether or not I give it much thought before I answer it. But when it comes to emotional responses this is extremely significant.
This is what we talked about at the beginning. One moment we are fine and the next moment we are throwing punches.
This might not mean making best choice right away, but when it comes to emotional responses a split second can make all the difference. For example, something makes me really mad and I can feel my rage growing. Because I have spent time working on what the thoughts are before my actions, I am able to have that split second to understand what is really going on. As the anger grows inside me and I feel like I need to hit the person in front of me I can see that that is a very bad choice and I am able to redirect my anger and hit the wall instead.
Hitting the wall isn’t a good choice. It is painful. It could cause permanent damage. It could destroy part of the wall. BUT when I hit a wall I won’t be arrested for assault.
So while hitting the wall isn’t a great choice, it is so much better than hitting a person.
When we slow down our responses by a split second we move from:
- Saying something really stupid and mean to just hanging up the phone.
- Tailgating the guy who just cut us off to just screaming a few curse words.
- Assuming the reason my friends showed up late is because they don’t think I am worth a phone call to recognizing that there are lots of reasons they might be late.
That split second becomes a powerful tool. When we are able to move away from a purely emotional reaction will make a huge difference in the responses we make.
A_B what is C?
Using this to create the new paths in our brain is straightforward.
1) Choose an emotion you would like to work on.
I have found it most useful to work on a number of past events for one specific emotion. This will help us to identify patterns in our behavior. You can come back to do the process as many times as you like for as many emotions as you like.
Common emotions to use in this process:
- Anger
- Sadness
- Frustration
- Jealousy
2) Come up with a list of instances when you felt the emotion.
For this example we going to use anger. You list might look like this:
- A: My boss didn’t return my call.
- B:
- C:
- A: My sister took my car without asking.
- B:
- C:
- A: The dog puked in the living room last night and my roommate who was home did nothing about it.
- B:
- C:
- A: My girlfriend called me lazy.
- B:
- C:
3) Add your response to each moment:
- A: My boss didn’t return my call.
- B:
- C: I sent him a nasty email telling him how mad I was.
- A: My sister took my car without asking.
- B:
- C: I called her and cussed her out.
- A: The dog puked in the living room last night and my roommate who was home did nothing about it.
- B:
- C: I scooped up the puke and put it in my roommate’s bed.
- A: My girlfriend called me lazy.
- B:
- C: I threw the TV remote control at her.
4) Add the thought that took place between A and C:
This is the step that will take the most time and thought. In some cases it will not be immediately obvious what the thought was before you made your response. You are trying to figure out the logic behind the emotion, which can be hard but the more you do this, the better you will become at it.
- A: My boss didn’t return my call.
- B: He doesn’t care about me or value the work I do.
- C: I sent him a nasty email telling him how mad I was.
- A: My sister took my car without asking.
- B: My sister thinks I am only here to meet her needs.
- C: I called her and cussed her out.
- A: The dog puked in the living room last night and my roommate who was home did nothing about it.
- B: My roommate is the laziest person I know and he thinks I am his personal maid.
- C: I scooped up the puke and put it in my roommate’s bed.
- A: My girlfriend called me lazy.
- B: My girlfriend thinks the world revolves around her and my job as a boyfriend is to serve her when she snaps her fingers.
- C: I threw the TV remote control at her.
Important note: Sometimes people have trouble doing this process because after the fact we are able to see clearly that the thoughts we had in the moment aren’t true. For example, there is a part of me that is responding emotionally to fact that my boss didn’t call me back. My emotions might think that he isn’t calling me back because because he doesn’t like me but in reality his mobile phone battery might be dead or he has switched it off while he is in a meeting.
Now that you have an idea of what we are talking about I want you to work through the steps above with the emotion of anger. Think of five times recently when you experienced anger and work them all the way to the end.
Side Note On Outcome AKA What Happened To D?
When we started there were four parts to each moment: Stimulus, Thought, Response, and Outcome. You will notice that in the exercise above I didn’t spend any time talking about the outcome of our choices. The outcomes of our choices are important, but we need to be careful when using the outcomes as the main factor we look at to see if we made a good choice. There are times where we can make the best choice and get a bad outcome and other times when we can make the worst possible choice and get a great outcome.
One of the guys from my class served as a perfect example of this. His pattern was to go out with his boys on Friday nights after work, drink too much, and end up in a fight. This would happen for a number weekends in a row. Because he was so big he normally didn’t get hurt too badly. One weekend everything changed because there happened to be a group of off-duty police officers in the bar when he started his usual fight. He was arrested for second degree assault.
Up until his arrest he didn’t think his drinking and fighting were a big deal because the outcome had always been fine.
Just because we are getting the outcomes we desire it doesn’t mean that we are making the best choices. As you look back at past events it is good to learn from the outcomes of our choices, but it shouldn’t be the only thing we look at when trying to measure success.