Children taught a Badass Gentleman how to keep his cool

Keeping your cool at all times is a classic trademark of a Badass Gentleman. A Badass Gentleman knows that anger and irritation cost a great deal of energy, can hurt others unnecessarily, and often distract from solving the issue at hand. Suffice it to say, mastering anger and irritation makes life easier and streamlines you emotionally. I set out to conquer anger and irritation as part of my quarterly life goals (Q3 2014), and I'd like to share my findings with you.

To start, I've never had an abundance of patience for inefficiency, ineffectiveness, stupidity, illogical argumentation, selfishness, and any number of other irritations. Simply put, I was impatient, had a short temper when faced with perceived idiocy, and I wasn't in the habit of trying to disguise it. I didn't come from a particularly peaceful family, and that played a role in it, but at my age, that is certainly no excuse for not having given a more concerted effort to address this serious drag.

He'd make an excellent addition to the Red Lantern Corps.

So I decided to fix it, using action-oriented self-reflection and progress tracking to figure it out. No anger management books, no therapy, no drugs. Just careful observation.

Since July 30, 2014, I've kept an irritation log of every single thing in the course of the day that irritated me, even in the slightest. Thus far (up until September 19th), I've made 101 entires, representing 83 irritations and 18 short-circuits. What's a short-circuit? When I was able to bypass irritation in a situation I know with certainty would've bothered me previously. Irritations could range from a car driver deciding to come to a dead stop behind a blind crest, to Taiga trying out for Olympic shot-put with a bowl full of yogurt. For every entry, I recorded what irritated me, the intensity of irritation, duration, why it irritated me, and the end result (what ultimately happened, and any changes I wanted to make going forward). There was also an automatically calculated irritation index, which was simply intensity times duration, to give an indication of the overall volume of irritation on a given day.

Nerdy approach to a touchy-feely subject

Now you are probably thinking, that's a heavily left-brained approach for addressing a touchy feely issue. And you'd be absolutely correct. It works for me though. My motivation comes from seeing real progress, and occasionally taking a look to see how far I've come. This is true even for touchy feely issues. In retrospect, the irritation log was truly one of the best tools for accomplishing my goal. If you're struggling with anger and irritation, I strongly suggest you try it. Included a Google Sheet with my irritation log set-up, in case you'd like to use it as a starting point.

What surprised me were the learnings from the kids. They became my best teachers for conquering irritation. Whether by luck or destiny, I've been surrounded by kids this summer (usually 4, up to 6). Three of them are the children of the owner of the home where we are staying. The other fluctuations came when other friends' children came by. And of course, there was Taiga, my own personal (tor)mentor.

Woody's face says it all

From children, I learned first and foremost that things are not always what they seem. In fact, they often aren't. Irritation can easily arise when people seemingly do not live up to your expectations. For example, Taiga appears to have randomly picked up a piece of trash, and tossed it high in the air and it lands on the room floor. What's not readily apparent is that there is a trash bag up on a ledge, in the direction of his throw. So he was actually trying to put the trash away, but at first glance, it just looks he was playing with garbage. I brought the bag down, he picked up the trash without me even asking, and tosses it into the bag.

The principle distilled from this observation is to give the person the benefit of the doubt. Normally, if you give yourself at least a few seconds to brainstorm valid reasons for seeming stupidity, you can come up with a reasonable explanation for the action. This becomes easier with practice, and might even be more effective as a game or challenge to yourself. Bonus tip: if you catch yourself starting a question with "why," there's a chance that a brainstorm prior to that question might help.

Seek that a ha moment

A second principle I derived from this is mentally preparing for worst case scenarios. It is literally imagining the worst thing that can happen, and more importantly, how you would go about solving it. Oftentimes, irritation comes so suddenly that we forget how easy the solutions are (even if you're in a rush, and don't have those few precious minutes to clean up after a mess). So it works like this:

Situation: I give Taiga a bowl of tofu and a spoon.

Worst case scenario prep: Taiga cuts up the tofu with his spoon, and throws the entire bowl on the floor. The fix is picking Taiga up off his chair, grabbing some paper towels, and cleaning up the mess together.

The result?

Maybe he'll do what you think. That's fine, you already thought of your solution so you can focus on doing it rather than getting angry about it.

Sometimes, he'll surprise and delight by simply eating the tofu. Less work for me!

Sometimes, he'll surprise you by squishing the tofu in his hands, and shampooing his hair with it. But with mental preparation, it seems funnier when it happens, since he found a way to top your worst case.

And for parents that face similar irritations, here's a study that indicates messy eaters are actually better learners, because interaction with non-solids (like poking, prodding, squishing, throwing) are all representative of a baby's attempt to better understand the object in front of him. "The toddlers who interacted the most with the foods were most likely to correctly identify them by their texture and name them."

Taiga conducting in-depth melon analysis

The second lesson I learned from the home owner's children. Put simply, it is that understanding the person more deeply helps to give a useful dimensionality to their actions and motives. On the surface, the oldest child was the least irritating (very obedient, did what she was told), the middle child only did things she wanted to do, and the youngest was the most irritating (cried and whined at the slightest thing). Upon deeper inspection, I noticed that the eldest child lacks self-confidence, and her obedience and model behavior is her chosen way of gaining affection. The middle child is far less obedient because she has figured out that she can gain affection through manipulation. And the youngest is incredibly emotional, but unable to properly verbalize them. So he ends up gaining attention through constant whining / complaining.

I'm not a psychologist, and I could be completely off with these characterizations. But at least in my mind, they helped frame my perceptions of these children in a more suitable, usable way. Knowing these things helped me understand their motivations, and offer explanations that helped prevent further irritation. It's certainly not perfect (whining and complaining are truly antithetical to badassness), but it made a big difference to me. At the end of the day, the more we can remove anger and irritation from our lives, the more streamlined we can be in the pursuit of our dream.