We all get frustrated, angry, depressed at some moments inevitably. The issue is not about feeling one emotion or another, the important thing is how we behave towards them.
Many times I felt a lot of frustration over some professional issue, to the point of feeling very angry and wanting to convey everything I thought to the responsible person.
Generally, it never works to communicate with someone in a state of absolute emotion. I correct myself, never does professional communication that is totally charged with emotion work. At that moment of anger, your brain is full of emotions, confused, lost, mixing reasoning and ideas.
But on the other hand, if we don’t materialize those thoughts, we don’t manage to ‘turn the page.’ That’s why, in my opinion, the best recommendation is:
💡 If you’re angry, write everything you want to say to the other person in an email or WhatsApp, but don’t send it.
Writing the message helps us in:
- Stopping the brain’s thought loop: by materializing what we want to say to the other, some ideas start to organize, and little by little, the need for an infinite loop of reasoning about it decreases.
- Feeling that we have already said what we wanted to say: in a way, we “trick” our head and “feel” that we have communicated with the other, although in reality, we haven’t sent anything yet.
- Perspective: we have the chance to see from the outside how what we want to say sounds, by reading ourselves we are listening and seeing from the outside with a bit more perspective.
- The UNDO effect or undoing: like in an Excel or Word file, we can wait one more day to review what we wrote and with a cool head go back on everything that didn’t make sense.
This last point is the most important because it teaches the brain that it’s better to wait. The next day, when we see the text and feel embarrassed about ourselves, we register in our brain that it’s better not to be that impulsive person who lets anger control their actions.
When we read any text with a cool head, we naturally focus on what adds value and eliminate what doesn’t add value. It’s something simple and easy, without effort we detect those comments that don’t add value and only subtract in communication. But, when “hot” or angry, that distinction is almost impossible.
The task I set for myself
I set myself the task of keeping those emails that are born not to be sent, so at some point, I can schedule a second meeting with them and reinforce this learning.