The best advice I’ve ever gotten came from a small, but fierce theatre professor I had a few years back regarding how to handle confrontations. She told me that crying and getting angry and upset had their place but, when it came down to the wire and you were staring across a table at someone who was tap dancing on your last nerve, she said, “Sometimes you just have to smile and decide to outclass the bastard.” I walked away from that conversation a little bit wiser than I when I’d gone into it, though the true usefulness of this advice wasn’t fully known to me at the time. It came back to me when I was called into a meeting with my supervisors a month or so later to be reprimanded for the actions of my team members. At first I got mad and cursed and spat to myself all sorts of insults at the powers that be for dragging me into a situation that wasn’t mine to begin with. Then there came a moment where a voice rang out in my head with the words of my professor. I calmed myself, took a few deep breaths and walked into that meeting smiling, fully prepared to outclass everyone in the room and you know what happened? I called the shots. In a room full of my bosses, all of whom were older than me, I called the shots and had them catering to my needs and apologizing by the time I left the meeting. Now I had finally learned a great lesson.

Temper, Temper.

Most of us enjoy blowing up when people are mean to us, and some of us just can’t stop ourselves. And when I say that we enjoy blowing up at people, I mean it. We like having things to get indignant about because we tend to get sympathy from those around us when we’ve been unfairly treated. When someone treats us poorly, our first reaction is to turn around with some scathing response that will make them want to jump off a cliff because of how horrible we make them feel. We want this reaction in the moment, but seem to know deep down that this type of retort isn’t going to help the matter at all.

I know this feeling all to well because I grew up overweight and with one hell of a temper, which meant that I was picked on in school and very quick to fight back about it. This temper hasn’t gone away in the years since elementary school, but I have learned how to work with it instead of against it. I’ve found that trying to work against your nature will hardly ever work. Many of the people who have an anger problem try to suppress it and it only ends up manifesting itself in other unhealthy ways, or eventually making them explode at inopportune moments. Instead of fighting against our natural reactions of anger, we should begin to find out how they operate inside us and use those reactions to our advantage.

When I get angry at someone it happens in an instant, bubbling up from my stomach and making my face feel hot. I think of all sorts of caustically witty things that will make them feel horrible about their own lives. I think of any insult I can to reduce them to a sobbing mess that I can walk away from brushing my hands at a job well done. This is what I want . . . until I stop and think about it, and then I realize that my purpose in life is to help people, not hurt them. It’s right around this point in the conversation that I excuse myself for a minute, to the bathroom perhaps. Once I’m locked away in a private place, I silently blowup. I let myself have the anger, I give into it for a minute or so, letting out every negative thing I can think about that person. After about a minute of this, I take a deep breath, smile and return to the conversation determined that no matter what else is said I will quite handily outclass the bastard.

Negative vs. Positive

Some of you out there will reject this idea because it sounds too negative. People on The Secret or in Law of Attraction books have told you that you shouldn’t think or say negative things because they could cause bad events to happen, but life is never that simple. To say that you must suppress negative feelings is to say that you will resist your natural urges, which never works. There is nothing inherently good or bad about any of your emotions, they are simply your natural reactions to the world around you. When you feel angry, you are having a natural reaction to a certain set of stimuli. What makes anger negative is that it tends to lead to negative reactions, both inside and outside the body.

All of the emotions you have, you have for a reason and none of them are naturally good or bad, they just are. If you find yourself afraid, or unhappy, or angry, that is your mind and your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. They are telling you that what you want is not what you are experiencing and that a change must occur. They’re like warning lights in the cockpit of a plane. If one of them turns on, there is a problem and it generally isn’t an insignificant one. To try to suppress, or turn off the emotions that you think are negative is as foolish as turning off the warning lights in the plane. Push away your emotions and you won’t have any clue there’s a problem until the engines stop and you fall out of the sky. The fact that you feel these emotions isn’t a bad or negative thing, it is how you react to them that decides their nature.

Venting anger to get rid of it isn’t a bad thing, so long as you do not identify with the anger itself, or vent in from of others. Try to observe your anger through the eyes of someone else. Step back and let it continue without you’re help. Let it tire itself out like a tantrum throwing child and give no energy to it. This is a much better option that keeping it pent up inside and remaining angry and negative for the rest of the day. You can store up your anger until it causes you to lash out verbally or physically and do something you’ll regret or you can detonate the bomb in an unpopulated area and spare everyone, including yourself. The point is that anger is natural and it is going to occur. There isn’t anyone in the world who doesn’t get annoyed at something now and again. Anger, sadness, fear, all of these “negative” emotions are a natural part of us and cannot be pushed out of our lives and therefore must be dealt with. The best way to do this is to let them run their course without adding any more energy to them, and avoiding venting to others as they will only fan the flames.

The Phrase and Negativity

I know a lot of people reading this might say that it’s negative to return to this conversation thinking “outclass the bastard,” as this seems like a negative intention. Really it isn’t, or it isn’t supposed to be used that way. To make this decision is to say to yourself, “I am going to decide not to reduce myself to a level at which I do not wish to be. I will remain at a more civilized level to teach this person, through example, how they should handle situations like these.” This is a great way to handle confrontation for many reasons,

1. People tend to follow your example and stay calm and collected. People will resist you even harder if you start throwing insults back at them.

2. It’s another example of choosing to be the change you wish to see in the world.

3. It allows you to stay grounded with your values by choosing to stay on your level and not reducing yourself for some cheap revenge that isn’t truly what you want.

4. It’s actually the best way to annoy people who do not choose to take your example. People who like confrontation can’t stand it when their taunts don’t have an effect. So if all else fails, at least you’re taking away their sadistic glee at the situation.

Next time someone rubs you the wrong way and you get the urge to shout something back at them, take a minute to excuse yourself and say everything you want to say in the privacy of the bathroom or your office, and then return to the conversation calmer, more collected, and connected to your true values. Decide to take the high road and “outclass the bastard.” Smile and be as polite as you know how to be and (here’s the kicker) mean it. Say thank you and mean it, say please like you mean it and, no matter what, be nothing but cordial to them. It will go a long way, believe me.

The Digital Age and Anger

This is really the best advice for things like online forums, instant messengers and emails. People get bigger and bolder in online forms of communication. How many times have we seen forums be reduced to a flame war over absolutely nothing, or how many times have you fired off an angry email at work before you stopped and really thought about it? The anonymity that electronic communication gives us makes us more likely to get cocky because we don’t have to look another person in the face. It may be easier for us to fire off that angry email than to sit back and decide to be nice, but which one really reflects who you are as a person? Most of the time, don’t we end up regretting those angry forum posts and emails? Later on we realize that we reacted foolishly, but don’t want to take it back, knowing we could’ve saved ourselves the trouble by taking a few deep breaths before we typed a response.

With this method of handling confrontation you’re taking yourself out of that moment, when you know you will not react the way you wish to react. You’re not in your right mind when you’re angry and that’s a problem. The rational side of you doesn’t want to make decisions when you’re angry, so remove yourself from the equation. By giving yourself time to detonate your rage in a controlled and unpopulated area before replying, you’re giving yourself a chance to make the decision that the rational part of you wants to make.

A Note on Detonation

As I said before, you can’t deny your anger because it will not be ignored, it will bubble up in other areas of your life and then it will start to cause some serious problems. The key is to let go of it without giving more energy to it. When someone has just gotten on your last nerve and you’ve finally removed yourself from the situation, but are still feeling that hot anger, you know it’s time to let it out. Find a nice, quiet place where you can be alone. It’s generally not a good idea to vent to other people, as they tend to like to join in and that is actually counterproductive. Our friends and loved ones get indignant on our behalf and only spur us on in our rage. If you feel you know someone to whom you can vent without having them participating, feel free, otherwise try to find somewhere you can be alone. Once you’re alone, let it all out. Rage at the walls; say all of the mean and nasty things that you’ve thought of to this point. Don’t hold back, just let it go. This shouldn’t take more than about five to ten minutes at most because remember that the idea is to get it all out, not to create more of it. When we let go of this anger we want to be able to step back from it as it is happening and disassociate ourselves with it. Realize that the anger isn’t you; it’s simply an emotion that you are experiencing. Watch it the same way you would watch a movie; passively. Don’t add anymore energy to that anger than it already has. Like a child throwing a tantrum, if ignored, eventually it will just tire itself out and stop.

Once it’s all over and most of it has dissipated, take a few deep breaths and try to think of something nice about the person you were just angry at. It may be hard, but this will get your thoughts moving in, hopefully, a slightly happier direction. Breathe deep from a few moments, think a happier thought, then square your shoulders and decide to handle the situation differently from now on. From this moment forward, no matter what is said or done, you will stoutly refuse to be taken down to a level at which you do not wish to be. Remind yourself of your values and morals and walk through the rest of your day knowing that you have acted in accordance with them.

Remember that this isn’t about revenge or holding a grudge. You may say some things in the heat of the moment that you know that you don’t mean, but at least this way you won’t have said it them to someone else. It’s one of my goals in life never to make others feel badly about themselves. It’s a hard goal, but when I can put this practice to use at least I can say that I’ve acted in a manner that fulfills that goal. I stayed away from petty revenge and, while hard, that’s a good day’s work for me. We cannot pretend that we are not angry or sad or unhappy, we can only choose not to let them run their course, deliver their message and leave us to make more rational decisions based on our values rather than our rage.