“I got triggered. I can’t help it. You know that’s my hot spot. It just drives me crazy. I lost my temper.”
How many times have you said or thought this? The language implies it’s the other person’s fault for not avoiding your trigger. It also implies that it’s okay to freak out when you have a hot spot.
It’s not.
Mike Tyson is one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time but has often failed to control his emotions and actions. I recently came across a 2022 tweet from Tyson that seems to summarize the lesson we all would do well to heed:
“I ended up realizing that if anyone makes me mad, they own me. So, I try to not get mad anymore.”
If I can make you mad, I own you. Lose your cool in a negotiation or difficult business environment, and someone else owns you.
There is a space between stimulus and response. When under pressure, we sometimes forget that fact.
Please excuse the extreme nature of this next example, but I want to make an important point about how we deal with triggers.
Imagine you enter into a negotiation to establish the price at which you will sell your company, the one that you have spent 12 years building. I tell you that even when the other side lies to you and forces you to sell for 40% less than your valuation, you cannot lose your temper.
You might fail at this, right? It’s your life’s work at stake. You’re not going to watch someone steal it.
Now imagine that I tell you if you fail to keep your cool, a loved one will be harmed. But if you remain calm, they will be okay.
Could you keep your calm? I bet you could. Why? Because getting a fair price for your business is not as important to you as the safety of your loved ones.
My point is simple: we CAN control how we react to triggers. There is a space between stimulus and response, and it takes skill and practice to navigate that space with true expertise. There almost certainly is something far more important to you at stake than whatever the trigger addresses.
Since we are all different, I can’t tell you precisely the right strategy to do this; I can only tell you that when you find your solution, you will benefit immensely. The first step is to remember that how you respond to life’s curveballs is literally the only thing you can actually control.
(P.S., this is not to say that triggers are not real or even useful; they often tell us something important about our values or a previous harm that we still have work to do to heal from)
“I got triggered. I can’t help it. You know that’s my hot spot. It just drives me crazy. I lost my temper.”
How many times have you said or thought this? The language implies it’s the other person’s fault for not avoiding your trigger. It also implies that it’s okay to freak out when you have a hot spot.
It’s not.
Mike Tyson is one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time but has often failed to control his emotions and actions. I recently came across a 2022 tweet from Tyson that seems to summarize the lesson we all would do well to heed:
“I ended up realizing that if anyone makes me mad, they own me. So, I try to not get mad anymore.”
If I can make you mad, I own you. Lose your cool in a negotiation or difficult business environment, and someone else owns you.
There is a space between stimulus and response. When under pressure, we sometimes forget that fact.
Please excuse the extreme nature of this next example, but I want to make an important point about how we deal with triggers.
Imagine you enter into a negotiation to establish the price at which you will sell your company, the one that you have spent 12 years building. I tell you that even when the other side lies to you and forces you to sell for 40% less than your valuation, you cannot lose your temper.
You might fail at this, right? It’s your life’s work at stake. You’re not going to watch someone steal it.
Now imagine that I tell you if you fail to keep your cool, a loved one will be harmed. But if you remain calm, they will be okay.
Could you keep your calm? I bet you could. Why? Because getting a fair price for your business is not as important to you as the safety of your loved ones.
My point is simple: we CAN control how we react to triggers. There is a space between stimulus and response, and it takes skill and practice to navigate that space with true expertise. There almost certainly is something far more important to you at stake than whatever the trigger addresses.
Since we are all different, I can’t tell you precisely the right strategy to do this; I can only tell you that when you find your solution, you will benefit immensely. The first step is to remember that how you respond to life’s curveballs is literally the only thing you can actually control.
(P.S., this is not to say that triggers are not real or even useful; they often tell us something important about our values or a previous harm that we still have work to do to heal from)