Check Your Hot Head at the Door

Communicating ideas positively and productively

My name is Jamie McCormack and I am a hot head. I regularly catch myself in situations where I would like to symbolically rip someone’s throat out for reasons that don’t warrant the behavior.  Why? As a human being I have, like most people do, a tendency to believe that I am right 99% of the time.  Like most of the people on the planet I have way too much on my plate and suffer from a severe lack of sleep which tends to impair my judgment on a regular basis. Now that I have made excuses for my behavior; lets discuss the many ways to avoid making other people feel like losers when we could exhibit a skill called tact and help them on their way to seeing our point of view.

We are always going to have situations with other people that make us feel crazy. These episodes bring thoughts into our minds that make us wonder how it is that people can be so daft.  Pause right here. This is the kind of thinking that gets the hot head into hot water, fast. If we rewind to the onset of our opinion - breathe, focus and think we will be able to see that everyone cannot be held to the standards we hold for ourselves.  Our standards, our ideas are just that – ours. We cannot expect that the world share our vision or our tastes. What we must do is be open to the ideas of others and when we find ourselves in disagreement have the patience to propose dialogue that offers constructive criticism rather than a balls-out anger-laced judgment.

I continuously become angry with myself when I do not exercise diplomacy. Diplomacy comes naturally to me especially when I am indirectly involved in a tete-a-tete. If I were to employ the skill of patience and some of the tact noted above, I could reserve the energy wasted on badmouthing someone and do something kind or creative with it. Let’s put this to practice in a scenario so that we can see what the possible outcomes of our behavior can be:

Mrs. Smite is an art teacher; she has a student that she adores because he is bright and creative. His name is Johnny Upanddown. Johnny frequently has good ideas but they often veer away from what Mrs. Smite sees as correct or meeting the standards of her class. The assignment she gives Johnny is to draw a picture of a lake; she would like him to include wildlife that is natural to the area, plants, people and whatever Johnny perceives to belong at the lake. (Let’s keep in mind that art is all about perception – she is giving him parameters but also asking for his perception)

Johnny proceeds to create his picture, he places a duck here, a goose there and draws a person sitting on a bench. For his grand finale, Johnny draws a large purple tree growing up out of a bright orange lake. He gleefully trots toward her desk to turn in his masterpiece. Mrs. Smite raises and eyebrow above her glasses. An orange lake? A purple tree? What in the hell is this? We all know there is no such thing. The following conversation ensues:

Mrs. Smite: Johnny, this is terrible. Do it again and do it the way I told you to do it.

Johnny: Okay, but that is what I saw when I was at a lake.

Mrs. Smite: There is no way you saw this. It is wrong. Do it again.

Johnny: But I saw it and I know it’s real.

Mrs. Smite: Johnny, this is a poor representation of a lake. Now do it again.

Johnny returns to his desk, defeated. He continues throughout his day confused and angered by his exchange with Mrs. Smite. Downtrodden and feeling powerless, Johnny picks a fight with another boy on the playground and is subsequently suspended from school and charged with bullying by the local police. Mrs. Smite cannot understand why such a good boy would do such a stupid and terrible thing.

Well, it looks like Mrs. Smite is unable to see how her lack of patience and inability to communicate in a constructive way led Johnny to feel so much frustration that he acted out of character and found himself in a heap of trouble. Let’s change the conversation and see how the day may have changed for Johnny if Mrs. Smite had breathed, focused and thought before she spoke:

Mrs. Smite: Johnny, this is an interesting representation of a lake. Do you want to tell me about it?

Johnny: Well, I was fishing with my dad and the sun started to set. It turned the water orange and a tree that had fallen during a storm was sticking up out of the water and looked like it was growing there. Some of the color from the water reflected on the tree and made it look blue from far away.

Mrs. Smite: That is very different. I have never seen that before. I had a very different idea of the lake in mind. Do you think you could draw another picture of the lake in the daylight so that I can see what it looks like then?  

Johnny: Yes, I can.

Johnny retreats to his desk excited to create a picture of the lake in the daylight for Mrs. Smite. After school Johnny goes home to share the two pictures he made at school with his mom. Elated that her son made not only one, but two pictures she fixes him a hot fudge sundae and Johnny goes to bed with a slight stomach ache but satisfied that he did a good job in Mrs. Smite’s class.

This illustration shows how taking a moment to recognize a difference of opinion, mentally sort it out and respond with constructive dialogue made an impact on the overall outcome of the situation. If we can cool our heads before exploding on another person we may unknowingly change the outcome of their day, week, month, year, and possibly their life.

This week I am going to challenge myself to leave my hot head at the door of a challenging situation. I am going to challenge myself to take twenty seconds to put myself in someone else’s shoes and open dialogue that promotes a positive outcome. I hope that you will do the same and tell me about it. I’d liketo hear how you’ve successfully avoided taking some unwitting soul to the gallows over something trivial.