We are in Session 5 and I want to welcome you to this session.  Before we begin, I want to do one thing very quickly.  And that's go back to Attitude.  We talked about it in the fourth session and there's a piece here I want to draw your attention to; this right here.

This right here is Attitude Awareness Scale. And what I'd like for you to do with it is take a few minutes, read the instruction, and then circle your answers after each of the ten statements that are made here. 

After that's completed, the next step would be draw a line so that you make all of them connected, like this, then if you will, if you put it in front of you, and you turn it so that attitude awareness scale is on your left side, you lay it down this way, and what happens is you begin to see a pattern.  And you'll look at the pattern and everything that's at the top are the things you do well, attitudinally.  And the things are at the bottom are the things that you need to improve on and do better. 

If you'll take that and use that on a regular basis, I would make copies of this, and then I would take those copies and from time to time just check your attitude.  It's a great way for you to develop the appropriate kind of mental habits that you want to work with all the time. 

So that brings us to our session today. And we're on Session 5, and we're going to look at it here.  And this is what we have.  

Notice it says Behavioral Essentials to Anger Management.  And there are some typical conflict situations here.  And these are described as behaviors that are rooted in experience.  And people tend to avoid behaviors and experiences that make them anxious or afraid of consequences beyond their comfort zones. 

Now, in a conflict situation, we know that at least two people are involved.  And it can be a larger party than two people, but most of the time it's two people.  

Both parties think that they have different values, and each person wants to win, and they want to do so, so the other person must lose in order for them to win.  And people with strong opinions find it difficult to see beyond their expectations.

Let's look at each one of these separately and let's look at them individually in a way that gives us some insight into what we're saying.  

At least two people are involved.  I'll give you a quick example.  My wife and I've been married 31 years. I t's been a wonderful experience.  I'm blessed to be in her life.  She says she's blessed to be in mine. 

We argued for a time over my listening ability.  And she would say things like, “You never listen to me.”  And my response was, “What do you mean I don't listen to you; I teach this stuff.”

Well, that means we had a difference of opinion.  Both parties think that they have different values as it applies to listening.

I felt like I was a good listener because I was teaching listening.  But I wasn't.  I wasn't listening to my wife.  When she would say something, I would respond by saying, “Here's what you need to do.”  And that's really not what you need to do when you're trying to be a loving spouse.  

My spouse, my wife, does not want me to tell her what to do.  She wants me to listen.  So I decided I'd have to change some behavior.  And if I change the behavior, it would change the way I listen.  I began to listen to her and respond by saying, “Really?  No kidding. Is that a fact?  Hmm, interesting.”  

And I used that instead of “Here's what you need to do”.  It made a tremendous difference in our relationship.  The reason it made a difference was because I've taken it upon myself to do something different.  

So if two people are involved in a situation that is a conflict, it could be a group, it could be a committee, it could be people sitting around a table trying to solve a problem, but when at least two people are involved, take some responsibility for your portion of that.  

And there are people who say we have a 50/50 responsibility in a communication.  I disagree.  I believe we are 100% responsible for our part of the communication.  We send messages, we receive them.  Most of the time, we think it's more important to talk than to listen.  But in these environments, that changing a behavior is important, and by changing the behavior, you change the atmosphere.  

Each person wants to win and to do so the person must lose.  That's really not true.  Yes, we are more competitive than we really think we are.  And there are two sets of skills that God's given us.  He has given us many skills, many gifts.  But there are two distinct skills, a competitiveness, and a cooperativeness.  And they are separate types of skill.  

To be competitive means that you want to win and so you play things competitively.  You compete in business, you compete in arguments, you compete in every situation you come in contact with where you think that there's a winner and a loser.

But if you just tweak that a bit and you started to say, if I have a competitive set of skills, what would be wrong with developing a cooperative set of skills as well?  And in a cooperative environment, and a cooperative set of skills, you're trying to help the other person win.  

So each person wants to win and if that's so, be on the side of the person that's opposite you that wants to win and help them win. When you do that, you become more effective as a communicator.  You become more adept at managing difficult conflict situations that sometimes escalate into real anger and real frustration.  And you want to avoid that as much as possible. 

The best way to learn these skills are to teach these skills.  If you're under ministerial role, or your team teaching role, for heaven's sakes, do all you can to share this information with others. And as you hear come out of your mouth and go into your ears, it becomes locked in for you. And that makes big differences.

People with strong opinions find it difficult to see beyond their expectations.  It's right there in your handout.  We see it, we say, how do we manage this?  How do we deal with this more effectively?  What can we do to make that more effective?  Let's see if we can pull this up for you and give you an example of how this might work.

We call this Patterns of Behavior.  And you see it in your hand out there.  And there are five bullet points associated with this idea of Patterns of Behavior.  And if we look at it this way comes like this:

Patterns of Behavior are those behaviors that we have to associate and be aware of in order to be more effective.  So if that's what we're trying to do.  Let me pause here for just a moment.

If that's what we're trying to do, we want to be more effective at managing the differing values that occur in these Patterns of Behavior; the social and economic variances, and you see situational and environmental conditions.  If we look at each one of these separately, we can we can help each other define what that might mean.  

Differing Values, for an example, when I was growing up, it was important for me to be in a car that was fancy.  I like nice cars and I wanted fast cars.  Well, fast forward to getting married and having children and all of a sudden it's not the fast car, it's the car that can accommodate the family.  So I found myself in a minivan.

Fast forward, I liked a bigger car when I got older. And the truth is, today, my values are, if this car can get me from here to there, I'm happy.  I'm happy with that.  And that's what we try to see is how are our values change as our lifestyles change.  And that's what we mean when we say, differing values.  And so there are patterns of behavior in those differing values.

Social and Economic Variances.  I know very wealthy people.  I know very poor people.  I'm somewhere in between.  I've been rich and poor; it didn't make any difference.  I felt the same way.  So the important part to remember is that social and economic variances are based upon the choices and decisions that we make and the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Situation and Environmental Conditions.  You may live in an abusive home.  You may live in or have lived in one that was just almost intolerable, and environmental conditions, sometimes those conditions can be horrific.  And other times, they can be pleasant.  But those create different patterns of behavior based upon what those situations look like for us.  

The attitude of others.  There are people who just seem to be grouchy.  Now I'm not making a value judgment, it's an observable reality.  They wake up unhappy, they go to bed unhappy. They are disappointed constantly.  They have a hard time being cheerful.  And yet at the same time, being positive and having a positive attitude seems to lend itself to elevating your energy level, and your enthusiasm.  

But the attitude of others is what we interact with all the time.  And we have to be respectful of other people's attitudes.  But what we have to do is choose for ourselves the attitude that's going to work the best for us.  Attitudes, or mental habits.  Keep that in mind, because it's an important component to what we've been describing.  And… 

Response to prolonged exposure to certain stimuli. There are people in the army and in the emergency first responders, who find themselves with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).  And it's caused from that exposure to that stimuli.  Now, being in a battle zone is a challenging thing to be involved in and it's hard for people sometimes to remove those memories, and remove those experiences and deal with the present moment because they seem to wander back emotionally and wander back in their mind to those events.

And if we recognize that patterns of behavior are created by these five, and many other examples of how behaviors are recognized and happen and develop, we begin to have a sense of the fact that all that input that's going into our brain filters through and comes out in the form of behavior, we get to make a choice as to what kind of behaviors we want.  

And if you notice this next slide that I'm going to pull up, let me see if I can pull this up for you.  Put this up here. 

Behavior is a choice.

You respond, or you react.  Respond- a reply that stems from knowledge based upon ethics.  React- a reply or behavior prompted by external influences that stimulate thought and behavior. 

So let's look at both of these. Both are appropriate.  Both are not right or wrong. They are behavior choices that you can make.  And you make the behavior choice based upon the situation. 

Now we described how, if we're walking down a path and we hear a rattlesnake we jump and we said that our physicality makes us jump before we can think about it.  That gut reaction that we have forces our body away from that scary noise.  And so in that situation, it's a require behavior prompted by external influences, that sound of that rattlesnake. 

Another would be you driving along and you're not paying any attention and the speed limit’s 35 and you're going 50.  And you glance in the rearview mirror and you react to the little red lights that are going around because, in that moment, your body is responding to the external influence of the police officer or the state trooper that's behind you that wants to have you pull over.

Reaction is an important lifesaving and life preserving aptitude.  It's one of the choices that we get to make when it comes to behavior.  We need at times to react.  

And then when we respond, it's a little bit more thoughtful.  You have time, you can think about, you can look at the choices and the alternatives in a response.

The same is true when we deal with anger.  We can either react to anger, if we were to react to anger, and we were to react the way we were being reacted on - they're angry, they're screaming, they're shouting, and we shout, we scream back, that's a reaction.  

Or, if we're responding, we're very calm; we're staying calm, we're staying focused, we're putting our eyes on them, they on us, and what we're doing is throwing at them a demeanor that they may or may not expect.  And by responding appropriately, with the right kind of precision in our communication, we help them because we're helping ourselves by not being drawn into or pulled into the environment that they're trying to create.

Some people use anger as a controlling mechanism.  In their mind, they think they need to be in control.  I think we've talked about the fact that you can't be in control, that's not possible.  What you can do is manage situations.  And a behavioral choice to respond is a much wiser choice in that situation, than to react.

Certainly if someone is going to take a swing at you, you're going to react by stepping away from it, or stepping aside. But my hope is that anger, never escalates to that.  If it does, and you respond, there's going to be a much better outcome.

And as you teach this to others, be aware that you have to acknowledge the fact that we have anger, all of us, in us.  And we get angry about certain things, and we get in certain frames of reference.  And those things come up and come forth.  But it's managing our anger and it's dealing with it in a way that keeps us whole and it keeps the people and the relationships that were involved in whole as well. 

So if you look at your handout here, it says at the bottom, people who learned to manage anger are far better prepared to meet challenges.  Daily life is presented as a dose of reality.  

All too often people do not want to accept reality for what it is.  And reality is the world that you cannot change some things, and there are other things you can change.  And you need to recognize the things you can change and work to change them and accept the things that you cannot change and recognize that you're not in charge.

What you're assigned to do is be the best you that you can be.  And you're the best you that you can be when you take advantage of all of the tools that are available to you. 

So when we look at this and when we say if there are two people involved or many people involved, it's a type of conflict situation and the best way to deal with conflict is to manage the moment and turn it into a series of moments and use that with the proper language to make that happen.  I want to go to an example of a reaction.

You say something, and someone just reacts by screaming.  “I can't believe you said that. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life!”  And they begin to go on and on and on.  And their face gets red, and their blood pressure rises, and you can see little beads of sweat coming out on their forehead.  I mean, they're in rage.  And let's call this person George for a minute.  We'll just use the name George.  

If our demeanor is calm and composed, and we say, “George, George, George”, and you say it three times, and you say it in the same cadence, “George, George. George”, something's going to happen that will surprise you because it will surprise George. See, when George is in that kind of a rage, George is being completely emotional.  There's no logic there.  And he's trying to control what he believes is uncontrollable, or he feels like he's out of control and he's trying to get back into control and he believes that the way to do that is to scream. When you say, “George, George, George,” and you don't raise any of the emphasis in your voice, instead of raising it would sound like this, “George, GEORGE, GEORGE,” That's not what you do. 

You deliberately, “George, George, George,” George will hear probably the third repetition and say, “What?!”  He might still be upset.  But in that moment, you have helped him move from his emotional to his logical brain.

See, we have all of this going on.  In our brain, the left side of the brain controls the logic in our lives, and the right side of the brain controls the emotion in our lives.  

And when we move from right side to emotion from the left side, it's best if we can try to get both sides of the brain working on whatever this challenge might be presenting.  

And so we do math on the right side of our brain, we do words on the …

I misspoke myself.  We do math on the left side of our brain, we do emotions on the right side of our brain. 

Now, in some people, it's reversed.  But mostly, the left side of our brain, which is this side, right here is where we find logic.  And this side of the brain is where we find emotion.  And when we say, “George, George, George,” and George finally responds with, “WHAT?!” and he's still upset, your response would then be, with precise communication to say, “George, we need to talk, not like this.  Let's take a break.”   

You say, that's going to work?

“We need to talk, the two of us.”  That's what you're saying.  “We need to talk,”, comma, but you're not saying a comma, “not like this,” comma, “let's take a break.”

When I discovered when you help someone manage their rage, and their anger, and their frustration, when you help them manage it, and you help them manage it well, they will come back typically, and apologize.  

Now, what's interesting about their apology is it's trying to get something they want.  And what they want, and do not necessarily know they want, is what you cannot give them because if you give them that, you're going to have another problem.  And the ‘that’ that you don't want to give them is permission to do it again.

So that part of the dialogue would sound something like this.  When George comes back and says, “You know, this morning when we are in that conversation, and I blew up, I just want you to know that I'm sorry”.

And your response to that is one, two words, and nothing more.  The two words – “Thank you”.   You say, “Thank you?”  Yes. “Thank you.”  You have just rewarded him for apologizing, without giving him permission to do it again.

If you say, “Oh, don't worry about it.  It's okay,” you've just given him permission to do it again.  So when George comes to you and says, “You know, listen, I know I blogged somewhere, I apologize,” and you say, “Oh, don't worry about it. It's no big deal,” permission granted.

When you say, “Thank you,” you are acknowledging his contriteness without giving him permission to revisit his anger.  

And get ready because you will discover that George will try to talk you into it. “Well, I just thought I ought to say something and that's why I came to you,” expecting you now to get into that other dialog, the ‘don't worry about it’ dialog.  But your only response to that second effort is silence.

Silence is a benefit to George in the long term.  It's not going to be comfortable in the short term for you or for George.  But the value is found in the pattern of behavior that you're trying to make an adjustment with.  And that pattern of behavior is George coming off the handle, George upset, and angry and frustrated all the time.  And the best way to manage that, the best way to deal with it, is to manage your vocabulary, the words you use in that situation.  

So if we sum up what we're talking about here in Session 5, we're saying to you that being able to respond or being able to react depends on the situation you find yourself in.  There are reactions that you have to take immediately in some instances; they're lifesaving.  And the reactionary behavior, is lifesaving behavior, it's protective behavior, and we need that.  And response is more time to think and reflect and use more data to help us make a good decision and a good choice.  

Remember, we said there were some building blocks here.  We also said to be successful, you have to be focused on the things that are going to work.  And behavior and behavioral adjustments are what we're describing here.  And those behavioral adjustments are choices that you get to make, and then you get to make a decision.  And it all revolves around that attitude that we described, and how important that is to you and to them.  And your right attitude is to thank them for the apology without giving permission to them, giving them the right to get angry again and be explosive again.  That's the thing you want to focus on. Your language helps them and you're helping yourself as well, because you're not climbing into their world.

I hope you've enjoyed Session 5, and I look forward to see you in Session 6. Thank you.