Here we are at Session 6.  We're halfway through the anger management program.  And I'm excited to invite you here today to talk about how peace of mind needs to be aligned.  And it's through our ability to manage our self-concept. 

And when I say manage our self-concept, I want to continue to reinforce the idea that you can't change everything, you can't change anything that's outside your sphere of control.  And what you try to do is control the things you can control and understand that there are some things you can't control. So a better word, a better word than control is manage. 

My job is to manage the moment because I can't control anything, in fact.  God's in control, you're not.  Neither one of us are in control.  We manage our lives and we try to do that in an effective way.  So when we look at what's available here, let's take a look at what we have for Session 6.

We're going to talk about listening.  Be an initiator.  Be open to feedback.  Offer self as a role model.  All the things that we need to focus on to be more in alignment with our self-control our self-esteem and we're going to try to recognize how important it is to set our ego aside.  

And ego is a low self-esteem. In fact, self-esteem is a low ego, high self-esteem is a low ego.  Low self-esteem is a high ego. And I hope that's not confusing. But ego, high ego, is low self-esteem. 

So if we're going to be successful, we have to look at this list.  And we have to see here that there's many things that we can associate with successful behavior.  But at the top of this list, is the word ‘Listen’.  And as I said to you before, we need to be more effective as listeners.  And in order to do that, we have to understand how listening works. 

God gave us one mouth and two ears and we have that faculty, two ears, to listen.  But we also need to listen with our eyes.  We listen with our eyes when we're watching a person's expressions, when we're watching their body language, when we're paying attention to are they anxious and does that furrow their brow?  Do they end up with perspiration?  Does their face get red?  

We need to register all that we see in our communication as well as all that we hear in our communication.  And as a good listener, the very best thing you can do is ask a lot of questions. So as you're listening to this person, “Well, let me ask you this,” or you might say, “Stretch that for me. Wait a minute, go back, you said...”  So these are mechanisms that you use in your communication to emphasize the fact that you're paying very close attention to this person who's doing the talking. 

There are a lot of books written on listening skills and developing listening skills.  But as a successful behavior, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for you to continue to grow that skill and turn it into a natural automatic behavior. 

I told you that my wife and I argued about my listening ability for a long time.  I finally decided that I had to figure out a way to make listening an active experience for me.  So I needed some ways to make that happen.  And I decided to start memorizing things.  And by memorizing things, I became more effective.  And that being effective was managing that situation in a way that allowed me to better understand others because my memorization was causing my brain to work differently. 

And there are three things that aren't in your notes, but I think that they can be very helpful to you if you decide to be a better listener.  The first thing would be to, as I said, memorize something.  

Something else that you can do which can be very helpful to you is to see a movie more than one time.  It’s interesting how, when you watch a movie, you see something.  And if you watch that same movie, again, a third time, a fourth, a fifth, each time you watch it, you pick up something that you missed the first time.  And that's a real value, because it allows you to see what you're hearing with your eyes as well as with your ears.  And that becomes a real valuable asset to you. 

So, be an initiator.  That's the other part of this that's really important to you.  When we say initiate, you take the initiative and take the action.  When we were talking in Session 5 about speaking to someone who has become explosive, you've taken the initiative, to use their name three times.  And cadence; so that that allows you to keep your demeanor, keep your calm and at the same time, it gives this person an opportunity to come from the emotional side, to the logical side of their brain. And it gives you the peace of mind that's in alignment with who you want to be. 

And then we also said that rather than give them permission to get angry and upset again, you as an initiator would use language that would give them something they deserve, and that's a Thank You for the apology, but no permission for doing it again.  And that's through the silence, even when you're prompted by them wanting you to, and they don't know necessarily that they want you to, give them permission. 

When you're open to feedback means that when you're getting feedback, you do not want to speak to the feedback in such a way as to shut it off.  If you're giving someone feedback, and they say, “Oh, well, here's the reason I did that,” well, they're giving you a signal that they're not listening.  They're giving you a signal that they're not paying attention because they're justifying something that they did.  

And if you're offering them feedback, and it's genuine and sincere, it has to be offered in a way that they're willing to accept it.  You're sending a message and they're sending it back to you by justifying what they did before as opposed to saying, “Thank you, that's something to think about.”  Okay?

Now, I have to tell you, even if you disagree with them to thank them and say, “Let me think about that. That's something to think about”, what you're doing is you're inviting more feedback, you would be astounded at how the value of the feedback improves when you give people permission to continue to give it to you.  So that's another place where you can be the initiator if you're serious about getting good feedback.

Offer yourself as a role model.  And you want to do that as you grow your gifts, your talents, your skill set.  In a ministerial role and in the work you do as a coach, the work you do in the community, all of those roles that you play, you’re role modeling, and what kind of a role model do you want to be?  If your self-concept is one of high ego and low self-esteem, that isn't going to give them anything that's going to be useful or helpful to them, except the arrogance that goes with a high ego.  And then, in essence, what's happening is you're not being a good role model. 

Be willing to make personal changes.  Throughout life, it's important for us to recognize how important it is to change and adjust and tweak who and what we are and what we're trying to be. 

So I'm going to suggest to you that if you're willing to make personal changes, you're willing to decide that your value system is going to adjust as you go from one age group to another age group.  You're going to decide to be willing to make personal changes in the way you approach conversations and the language that you use.  How you set aside time for your family, how you set aside time, and how you're never going to be too busy to love and be caring.  

Deal with your own fears and assumptions.  We have them.  Fear is real, and fear is healthy.  It keeps you from putting your fingers on a hot stove.  Fear keeps you from putting your hand in the lion's den.  But fear can be unruly and you have to be cautious with how you manage fear.  

The other thing is to stay in touch with the real world.  And you stay in touch when you recognize that you have to take a developmental learning approach to everything.  And if you decide that I want to be a lifelong learner, the balance and the value is found in the fact that those opportunities will come along.  And you'll continue to stretch and become more successful because your behaviors are behaviors that embrace this attitude of being a lifelong learner.  

People forget what they hear, remember what they see, understand what they do, and you decide to behave by doing.  And that means picking up a book and reading a book.  I would urge you to read some of the books that we have in the section that tells you where this information came from.  Pick one of those books, read it, and study it. 

And there are some things that you can do in your reading habits that can help you. You know, sometimes people look at a book and they think, Oh, I'll never get through this, well, maybe you don't have to.  Maybe there are only parts of that book that are valuable to you and important to you.  And you want to reflect on that and see if you can come up with the pieces that are going to make the most sense to you.  We'll talk about that a little bit more in one of our other sessions. 

Let's take a look here and continue to look at what we have in store for you with these slides.  So I'm going to put one in here and pull this up.  And let's take a look at this one.  

Behavioral cautions.  You see a little box over there on the right of your handout and that little box starts out by saying that you want to be making judgments or threats is a behavioral caution. We shouldn't be judging anybody.  God is the final judge. And when we start judging others, we have a tendency to do that based upon our own fixed perceptions of reality. 

And I'm going to suggest to you that value judgments are very destructive, and they're not helpful.  So if you attempt to fix blame, you're making a judgment - I'm right and you're wrong. It's only a matter of time before you figure it out.  That's really what you're doing when you try to fix blame. Well, it's not my fault. You see, when something happens, rather than look to blame, look to solve.  When something happens, you have to decide. Next time, I'm going to do something different. 

Have you made a mistake? I have? Did you learn from your mistake? That's the question to ask yourself?  And did you really fail?  If you made a mistake, and things didn't turn out the way you wanted them to turn out, you still succeeded in producing a result that may not have been the result you want, but you succeeded in producing a result.  Now what did you learn from that experience? 

I remember that when I made a mistake years ago going into a small business that I wanted to go into, I didn't do enough homework and research.  And I fell flat on my face.  And I learned from that experience that if I was going to be in business and do it again, I had to put a plan together and then work the plan. 

And it's important for us to recognize the value of planning, it's important for us to recognize that when we make a mistake, it's our fault. No, it's not fault. It is experience.  It's our experience. 

Now we're going to take that and try to learn something from it.  Guess what?  If you make the same mistake over and over and over again, it's time to say this is not working. What can I do differently? And you decide to do something that's different. And when you do, there's a real benefit that comes to you and those around you.

Interrupting.  You're in a conversation with someone and you see this often. I do.  Where you're talking and someone's going… they’re trying to interject, and they interrupt you, and so then you stop talking.  You can correct some of that.  You can also draw it to someone's attention. by saying, “Thank you for being patient with me.  Please let me finish.” Or you can say, “Please listen to my words.” 

Now that may sound really strange.  But by asking someone to listen to your words, they will be taken by surprise. People normally don't talk like that, supposedly, but I'm suggesting it's a behavior that is a successful form of communication and this behavioral caution of interrupting is a habitual one.  I find myself getting in anxious situations and I start interrupting. And then I have to back up and call myself on the fact that I'm interrupting.  It's rude.  I do it.  I do it less.  But there was a time when I did it all the time.  I just interrupted constantly because I thought what I had to say was more important than what anyone else had to say.  That's not a good plan. 

Using a patronizing or generally hostile tone is a behavioral caution. What you're doing there is you're watching the tenor of your voice, the tone quality you're using. 

If you walk into a meeting late, and someone says, “Oh, well, glad you finally decided to show up,” they think it's funny.  It's not.  It's patronizing, and that general hostile tone tells you that they're annoyed by it.  But they try to cover it up.  

You say, “I'm sorry, I'm late.”  And, “I was just kidding,” but people say what's inside them.  And so are they just kidding?  

I have a sense of humor.  I hope you do.  We all do.  How much of it you show people is another thing.  But these cautions are important to us.  And humor often underlies a loneliness, a frustration, or disappointment, so we have to be careful with how we manage it.  

So we've got one more slide that is representative of this page.  Let's go to that slide. And by taking a look at this, what we're able to do is examine this idea of self-esteem. 

We said self-concept or self-esteem, and self-esteem, in just a brief statement is how much you like yourself. You say, “Well, I don't know if I should like myself”. And I'm suggesting to you that it's extremely important that you like yourself.  Like starts to love.  And if we love our neighbor as our self, it means that we have to love ourselves enough to love our neighbor.  And the biggest mistake that people make is to try to love their neighbor and their neighbor doesn't love them back. 

Looking at this illustration, you see passive and aggressive.  And the passiveness and the aggressiveness is something we work with and try to find balance in our entire lives.  And I'm suggesting here that it takes courage, connection and caring to do that.  And in order to make that happen, we need to recognize what it means to have courage, what it means to be connected, what it means to be caring.  And then recognize that the balance between being passive and aggressive is a real balance in our lives.  And courage, connection and caring, create confidence. 

But it starts by asking yourself the first question, what would you do if you were brave?  If you're brave, you would do things that you're not doing now.  And I'm going to suggest to you that if you use that in small and big things all at the same time, you'll find it a practice.  Ooh, what would I do if I were brave?  And by answering that question from time to time for yourself, you'll find yourself taking risks that are calculated, but they will put you in new adventures. 

I was in a workshop and that question was asked around the room.  And I found myself answering that question in a very strange way when I said, “Well, I'd buy a house in Ruidoso, New Mexico.  And that fella that was conducting the workshop said, “Write it down,” so I did. 

I got home, it was a weekend workshop that I was attending, and my wife said, “How did the workshop go?”   I said, “Oh, honey, it was really interesting.  I got a lot from it.  And I enjoyed it.  It was wonderful.   And he asked me a very interesting question, “What would you do if you were brave? And I said, I buy a house in Ruidoso, New Mexico.”  She laughed.  I laughed.  She said, “It's funny that you would say that,” and I said, “Why”? 

Well, our friends had just purchased a home in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and they were telling us about it two or three weeks before, and how they had purchased this home and they were going to spend Thanksgiving there and Christmas there.  They lived in Kansas City, Missouri at the time.  And they were going to go to Ruidoso, New Mexico from time to time, just to enjoy the mountains and the different climate. 

And she said, “It's funny that you would say that because Peggy's builder called and said that he had just built another home in Ruidoso, in New Mexico, and wanted to know if we were interested in it.” 

I'm going to make a long story short here.  We went the following weekend to look at that home, we bought it.  We went out there and decorated it, we put it in a rental pool.  We went out there three, four times a year.  And the rest of the time, we rented it.  And we had a lovely getaway. 

We lived in St. Louis at the time.  So it was an airplane flight 153 miles from Albuquerque, New Mexico, as far south as you could go, and still be in a ski resort. And in the summertime, it was a beautiful place to be.  Now I did that on a lark by answering the question, what would you do if you were brave?  That was a big thing I did with little things.  

I'm standing in a rental car counter several months later.  My wife is with me, we're in California.  I'm doing a workshop in California.  And she's there.  And she went with me and she's going to stay in this nice hotel.  I'm going to do my workshop.  We're going to have the weekend together after I finished the program.  And I'm standing at the rental car counter. 

And I said to her, the lady who is renting me the car, “I'm asking myself a silly question.  What would you do if you're brave?  So I'm going to be brave today?  How much are convertibles?”  She said, “I don't know.  Let me check.”

Well, it happened to be on special of course.  And it was $5 more than it was to rent a sedan.  So lo and behold, without telling my wife, I just smiled at her while she's sitting with the luggage and waving at me.  I waved back.  I said, “Put me down for a convertible.” 

So I have the ticket in my hand.  We're walking out to our car. And we're going by E-14, E-13, E-12, and they're all convertibles. My wife says, “Hey, they're convertibles. What's our number?”  I said, E-5.  She looks at our ticket, and she looks down the line.  She realizes we've got a convertible.  She just absolutely went crazy.  She was so thrilled.  We put the top down.  We had a lovely weekend.  What would you do if you were brave?  

Now those are big and little decisions, but when we have courage, we do it because we ask ourselves a question that has risk involved.  When we're connected to people, we're trying to be interactive with people, we're trying to do things to make connections, and find things that we have in common and help each other because we're in this together. 

Relationships are what we build our lives with. And those connections, how we make these connections between our behaviors and the outcomes that we get is another example of connection.  So connections with people, but connections with our self and with the behaviors that we have the attitudes that we have, all of that's important.  But just the word connection has so many connotations. 

And we can use it individually with ourselves.  What kind of connections am I making?   What connections am I making with my behaviors?  With my attitude?  What kind of connections am I making with others?  Just as we asked the question, what would you do if you were brave, I say what kind of connections do you have in your life?  Do you have a lot of connections?  Do you have fewer connections, with your behaviors, with your attitudes, with your choices, with your decisions, with your mistakes, with your successes, with 

See, if we're talking about self-esteem, you have to care about you to care about others.  You have to represent the fact that you have confidence.  And that confidence comes from the quiet confidence built on being authentic and being sincere, being genuine, being willing to change, being willing to be more loving in a world that needs more love. 

It's all the things that Jesus taught us.  And if we do that, the value will find us.  And the value will be in the peace that comes and the mindset that helps us align with that peacefulness. 

So my hope is that you'll take this section, and realize that this peace of mind aligned is a real valuable tool in helping you become more effective at dealing with the situation that you find yourself in when someone's angry or upset, the situation you're in when you're angry or upset, and your sensitivity to that.  And recognizing that has a benefit to you.

I grew up, I was an angry, grumpy kid.  I also was a cranky, young adult.  And it wasn't until I discovered that I needed to stop blaming other people for why I felt the way I did, and start looking back at myself and realizing that if I want the situation to change, the change begins with me.  I had to change me. And I didn't do it by myself.  I asked my Heavenly Father to give me guidance and direction.  I do that every single day.  And I use Jesus as the model, the very model of what we need to be and do.  

And then we live out loving thy neighbor as thyself.  It's easy to love people who love you back.  It's when you love someone that's hard to love, that you're practicing what we're supposed to be practicing; the development of behaviors that help us focus our attention where it belongs, on how we serve others.

That's how we lead. And that's how you lead as a pastor, as a coach, as a counselor, all of it as a teacher.  You're leading.  Leaders serve those they lead.  That's the message of anger management. You lead people into a better understanding of how to manage their emotions.  

So, I look forward to seeing you in Session 7.  And thanks so much for being here and listening today. God bless.