Edition #6 | Managing Anger and Choosing Your Response

I want to tell you about two seconds.

Earlier this week, something small set me off. I won’t even describe it because it didn't deserve the size of my reaction. But it happened. My heart started to race, I felt tense, and words I’m not proud of began spilling out before I had time to process the situation.

That is the part that still surprises me. The anger shows up without a thought. A fiery reaction on autopilot. By the time I notice it, I’m already halfway through a reaction I already regret.

For a long time, I believed the goal was to not feel the emotion at all—to be the calm, steady man who never gets triggered. I’ve let that idea go. What has changed is what I try to do in the couple of seconds after I’m triggered.

Because that is where everything happens—not in the trigger, but in the small, unglamorous space between what set me off and what I choose to do next. Viktor Frankl called it the space between stimulus and response. I just call it the gap. And the man Kelly, Ryan, and Katie actually experience is not the man who never gets angry. It is the man who decides what to do with it.

Some days I get those two seconds right, but there are plenty of days I don’t. This week I didn’t—I reacted before I chose, and I had to go back later and repair it. That is part of the work too. Owning the gap isn’t about becoming perfect. It is about noticing the fire and coming back when I miss.

This week’s article goes deeper into all of this—why our reactions are so often bigger than the moment, what our anger is actually trying to tell us, and the four simple steps I try to walk through when I feel triggered.

Read: The Fire Is Real. The Choice Is Ours.

Here is what I will leave you with this Saturday. Sometime in the next few days, you are going to feel the fire rise. When it does, try to catch it. You don’t have to respond perfectly. Just notice it. Find the two seconds. That is where the work begins.

Still learning this alongside you,

Scott