In this episode, we discuss how explaining your anger is more helpful than showing your anger and what are the techniques to do so.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how we should explain our anger, not express it. I think this is a very valuable practice because if you can express your anger, then it won’t build up and there will be less collateral damage. I used to keep a lot of things in but now I ask myself, is it worth it to be upset at this thing. If it’s a one-time thing, then I ask myself, is it worth saying something because is this person really going to learn. If they are not going to change, then I just change my environment without that thing or person in my life.
I’ve been having problems with the past couple of Airbnb with excessive noise and it interrupts my recordings of podcasts and YouTube Videos. During the day, there is a lot of construction happening here in Medellin and I can’t really control the noise from construction, so my plan was to move to another place, but then it took my three different Airbnbs to finally find one that was quiet and had good internet. There were many days where I was angry at the situation and there was nothing I could do about the construction. At my second Airbnb, the upstairs neighbors were really loud. Instead of yelled at them, I just told them I was trying to sleep and they put down the music. This was a Thursday night at 10 pm. It wasn’t a good situation at that Airbnb, and it was just best to find a different place.
I was married before and I wish I knew how to better express my feelings. It would have saved us a lot of time and money. I was angry at this situation, and I just kept it in until one day I expressed my frustration with the situation. And when you express your anger and frustration, then things are not going to go well. It’s much better to explain the anger. And most of the time you need a cool-off period in order to explain your anger instead of expressing it.
When it comes to thinking there are two types. Fast thinking is responsible by your amygdala and slow thinking which is responsible by your prefrontal cortex. When you express your anger, it’s done by the amygdala which is responsible for your fight or flight responses. These are quick reactions and sometimes the amygdala gets the best of us when we hold on to something that is bothering us for too long and we’re not able to hold on to it for much longer. If this happens, then things are going to get messy because it can cause the other person to express their anger or emotions real quick.
Then it’s going to be a lot harder to fixed things when it gets to this point. It’s better to sit down and start explaining your anger. And I would use your statements like you should have done this, or you’re making me miserable. It’s better to use I statements like I feel upset when this particular thing happens. If you explain to people that you’re upset when these things happens, you’re explaining to them what you want your standard to be like. People are not mind readers and if you don’t tell them what you want, they are going to do whatever is natural to them. I know for myself, I like to take off my shoes sitting down, and taking off my shoes near the door is something that is not comfortable for me. So then my shoes tend to stay located where I take them off. Now if someone is upset at this, then they have to let me know by explaining why they need to have shoes taken off near the door.
Now the other person needs to know that it will take time to develop a new habit, so they are probably going to need to remind me a couple of times. If it’s reasonable I’ll do it. But if the person were to yell at me, then it’s going to cause a problem. If we can do this, then this would solve a lot of problems. There were things that made me angry at my last couple of jobs but I saw that I couldn’t change the situations, and it was better for me to move on with my life. I ended up explaining my frustration in a letter so I could get my emotions out and I feel a lot more calm. I saw what was bugging me and then I focused on what I could control. Now I’m a lot better.
This is going to take practice so don’t be upset when you explain your anger and things still get worse. Let the other person have their cool off period as well and do the exercise again. If you need to go to therapy then go to therapy, but don’t keep your demons in because when you do that, they go into your soul and start lifting weights to get stronger. And eventually, you will express them and it won’t good.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, explain your anger, don’t express it. Even if you don’t get your way after you explain your anger, it still allows you to let go of that thing that was holding you back. Now you can focus on what you need to move on with your life. So use your I statements like I feel upset when there are dirty dishes left in the sink because I end up cleaning them and it just adds more work to my day. I would like it if they were immediately put into the dishwasher instead of left in the sink. Something like this gives the other person a clear why and a clear call to action on what needs to be done to resolve the issue. Now it’s up to the other person to follow through and they will probably need reminders. Things might get worst at the moment, but the future is going to be a lot brighter once the dust settles.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is something that is frustrating you or causing you to be upset? What is causing this feeling? What is the best way to resolve it? How can you communicate it properly to the people that are causing you to feel this way? You also have to ask yourself if you’re being irrational as well. Somethings you can’t change and it’s best to move on. Either way, start explaining your feelings and don’t express them.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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