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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 23 phrases to help you fight right.
Almost all couples fight; the secret is to fight right. I’ve posted about what not to say during a fight. Here are some phrases that actually help.
I review this list from time to time so that when I’m arguing with my husband, I remember the phrases that help me fight right. Recently, for instance, I was angry at him for showing, I thought, a lack of respect for my priorities. So I waited until a good moment (this itself is tough for me) and said, “I need you to listen. This is important to me.” From his startled expression, he clearly thought I was starting a fight; but by warning him that I needed him to respond carefully, we managed to avoid a fight altogether.
When my husband and I do argue, I find that the single best technique to apply is humor. If one of us can laugh and joke around, the angry mood lifts instantly. But during an argument, my sense of humor is the first thing to go.
Failing that strategy, here are 23 phrases that help turn down the heat of anger:
Please try to understand my point of view.
Wait, can I take that back?
You don’t have to solve this—it helps me just to talk to you.
This is important to me. Please listen.
I overreacted.
I see you’re in a tough position.
I can see my part in this.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
I could be wrong.
Let’s agree to disagree on that.
This isn’t just your problem; it’s our problem.
I’m feeling unappreciated. [Always, my craving for gold stars!]
We’re getting off the subject.
You’ve convinced me.
Let’s take a break for a few minutes. [If you can remember to do this, it’s extremely effective—especially if you’re having a big fight. After a break, it’s almost impossible to go back to yelling.]
Please keep talking to me.
I realize it's not your fault.
That came out all wrong.
I see how I contributed to the problem.
What are we really fighting about?
How can I make things better?
I’m sorry.
I love you.
I actually get tears in my eyes when I read this list. Such is the uplifting power of fighting right.
Also, to fight right, it’s very important to respond well if your sweetheart makes a repair attempt—the technical term for a gesture of reconciliation and love. Don’t rebuff a repair attempt!
What other strategies or phrases have helped you fight right?
* A thoughtful reader sent me the link to an excellent blog Half Full, about "the science of raising happy kids."
* If you like the blog, you'll love the book! It's not just a collection of touched-up blog posts, I promise. Pre-order The Happiness Project now!
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I'm quick-tempered, and one of my greatest happiness-project challenges is to bite my tongue; an excellent way to boost my happiness is to keep my resolution to "Leave things unsaid." In the end, I'm always happier when I don't make some angry or snarky comment. But easier said than done.
This is particularly difficult with my husband. Even when I manage to leave some comment unsaid three times, four times, five times, often a version of that comment pops out of my mouth in a weak moment.
I've made big strides in this area since I started my happiness project, but I still have a long way to go.
Mindfulness is the key, but my challenge is to find a way to be mindful in an angry, annoyed, or hurt moment. When I remember to "count to 10," I can usually manage to do it, but often I say something I regret before it even occurs to me to count to 10. One of the reasons that St. Therese of Lisieux is my spiritual master is that she writes so well about the struggle to leave things unsaid.
The best way to leave things unsaid is to leave them unthought, or if I've thought them, not to dwell on them. I've noticed—no surprise—that the more clearly, and the more often, I've articulated some grudge or criticism in my mind, the more likely I'll give voice to it.
Have you found any good ways to count to 10, to leave things unsaid, to keep yourself from ruminating?
Self-mastery. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."
* Yet another happiness-project group is forming! I’m especially thrilled to see this one starting, because it’s in my own neighborhood of Manhattan. Check out the Facebook Group or e-mail NYCHappiness@live.com for more information, and if you know someone who might be interested, please pass along the link.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format—trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
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One of my personal major, constant happiness challenges is trying to deal constructively with feelings of anger and irritability. Yesterday morning, my father-in-law mentioned a strategy that he recommends: When a person does something that annoys him (or whatever the negative emotion might be), he recalls a situation in which he made the same mistake himself. That makes him less angry, more understanding.
This strategy doesn’t work well for everyone, however. Some people, my father-in-law observed, are able to do this effectively, but for others, the recognition that they’ve behaved similarly doesn’t translate into greater understanding or forgiveness. And a third category isn’t able to see any parallels at all—to these folks, they must have had a good reason to have acted the way they did, and the mistakes others make are inexcusable.
I tried to apply this strategy myself. Here’s a small thing, but a recurrent source of anger in my life: My husband’s failure to answer my e-mails dealing with logistics. “Can we have dinner with so-and-so on June 22?” “Do you leave for London on the 3rd or the 4th?” “Did you reschedule the orthodontist’s appointment?” These e-mails just don’t get answered. It drives me nuts.
I’ve tackled this problem in lots of ways. I’ve tried working on the logistical side, and I’ve tried working on my mental-attitude side. But I had never thought to try to put myself in my husband’s place and ask myself, “Do I fail to answer people’s logistical e-mails?” The answer to that question is a resounding yes. I often procrastinate on doing exactly this kind of work. I just can’t face the kind of systematic thinking, checking, and replying that it takes.
OK. I think I do understand better now. Does it makes me less angry? Actually, I think it does. It also reminds me that I should do a better job of answering other people's logistical e-mails.
* Penelope Trunk has a fascinating post about how to decide where to live. This is a complicated, difficult, and extremely important decision that has a lot of significance for your happiness.
* Considering doing your own happiness project or have some ideas to share? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page to swap insights, strategies, and experiences.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Eight tips for conquering anger and irritability.
Hah. It’s really quite preposterous for me to offer up a tips list on this subject. A tendency to fly off the handle is one of my most disagreeable and persistent traits and something I battle with—largely unsuccessfully—every day. For me, anger is the most tempting of the seven deadly sins. At best, you could describe me as "edgy."
This list shows the strategies I try to use to keep myself patient and mild-mannered, but I certainly can’t claim that they’ve been wholly successful. I still lose my temper far too often; however, I do think I’m doing a better job than I would be if I weren’t following these tips:
1. Pay attention to my body. Being too cold, too hot, and, especially, too hungry makes me far more irritable.
2. Don’t drink. I basically gave up drinking because alcohol makes me so belligerent.
3. Acknowledge the reality of other people’s feelings (usually this arises with my husband or daughters). Instead of snapping back answers like “I don’t want to hear a lot of whining” or “It’s not that big a deal,” I try to show that I understand what someone is saying.
4. Be realistic. For instance, I often get irritated when someone interrupts me when I’m reading—but I should know better than to try to read the newspaper during my daughters’ Saturday morning breakfast. Of course I’m going to get interrupted.
5. Don’t expect praise or appreciation. I often feel irritated when someone (usually my husband) doesn’t notice and praise some effort on my part. For example, when I went out of town last week, I got my older daughter completely organized for a field trip before I left. I snapped at my husband because he didn’t appreciate this Herculean accomplishment on my part.
6. Squelch my reaction. Not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate. I have trouble with this in person but often manage to do it if it involves e-mail; the deliberate effort of writing an irritated e-mail often gives me the opportunity to decide not to send it. I find it tougher to bite back an angry retort—but I’m working on it. When I can manage, acting the way I want to feel always helps me to change my feelings.
7. Make a joke. OK, some of these strategies are more fantasy than reality, but on the rare occasion when I do manage to make a joke during a moment of irritation, it works beautifully to lighten the mood.
8. Try not to be defensive. Many of my most harsh reactions are triggered by some kind of accusation—that I did something wrong, that I did something rude, that I screwed up in some way. If I can admit to fault or let it go, I can lighten my anger. My anger is tied to my pride, and pride is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
In my case, as this list shows, anger stems from a tendency toward perfectionism. I want to control things, have events unfold exactly as I want, have people behave exactly as I direct, and get lots of credit for everything I do. Surprise! That’s not how the world works.
What strategies have I missed? What helps you defuse anger and irritability? I need more help!
* My friend and blogging mentor Jonathan Fields has two excellent blogs: Awake at the Wheel, which has a lot of great material of general interest, and Career Renegade, which is more focused on work and career. Jonathan's book, Career Renegade: How To Make a Great Living Doing What You Love
, has gotten a lot of buzz.
* Considering doing your own happiness project or have some ideas to share? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page to swap insights, strategies, and experiences. Also, people who want to start happiness-project groups have started to post their cities, so if you're interested in joining or starting a group, look there.