Hello everyone and welcome. Today we’re going to talk about anger and I will do my best to make it fun. I’m going to share one of the biggest lessons I learned recently about getting angry and I’m going to teach you a coaching tool I’ve been using with my private coaching clients and I invite you to try it as well. With so many couples working from home together, I know for a lot of you there are little annoyances that don’t matter as much when you don’t have to spend the whole day dealing with them, but now they are just amplified so I really invite you to take this tool and run with it this week. I’m going to teach you the anger scale. Before we dive in on the anger scale, I want to thank you for all the love and support you’re giving my very first book, the questions for couples journal.
I am recording this the day before it officially launches. It’s been on preorder for the last few weeks, but thanks to all of your preorders we keep rising up on the Amazon rankings and as you listen to this, you might have gotten your book already. If you have, I would love to see your pictures. If you’re on Instagram, please tag me. My Instagram handle is @themaggiereyes and now let’s dive in. I’m going to teach you my favorite anger management tool, but first before I do that, you know I like to keep it real on the show and I want to tell you a story of when I recently lost it completely with the bank manager at my local bank. And the reason I want to share this story is I really want to keep this podcast and to keep all the work that I do really real. To just show you a little bit about the behind the scenes.
I use all the tools that I teach all you guys because I need them. We all have a human brain, so here we go. At the end of last year I changed the name of my company and my company’s name is now called Maggie Reyes International and I needed to update the bank records with the new information. And once we got to the bank, it turned out we didn’t have everything we needed to make all the changes, even though we had everything the same as when we opened the account. Apparently the bank updated its requirements and didn’t really inform us until we were about to sign all the new paperwork, which was not so delightful. And so I asked a bunch of questions to the person that was helping us and then the bank manager came over to try to help and he promptly and immediately made everything like 10 times worse.
So remember I used to work in five-star hospitality. I used to screen and hire people based on their customer service philosophies and examples. Now as a life coach, I often teach my clients how to diffuse and deescalate arguments. It’s literally like my thing. So this guy comes over and instead of helping makes it worse, he’s like super rude, and it’s not just that he doesn’t answer my questions, it’s really the way that he doesn’t answer them. So I asked something really specific like which bank policy prohibited what we wanted to do. And his answer was, we don’t share that with clients. And he was literally, we don’t share that with clients. He could have answered a thousand different ways. He answered as if I was interrupting his day instead of as if I as a client of the bank and the reason he has a job, right, that difference.
And for the record, this was way before the Coronavirus was a thing. He was not under any extra pressure whatsoever. He was just not displaying his highest and best self in that moment. And I always joke around with my friends and if you listen to the podcast for any length of time, you’ll hear me say this, that you never want to see the Cuban-ity unleashed. So I’m Cuban American and the Cuban-ity is my passionate Cuban side. And I am not proud to say this, but I unleashed it. I left the bank, this really happened, I left the bank, walked out with the hubby. We were leaving. I left the building and I turned to my husband and I said, you know what, I’m not done. And I turned around and walked right back in and I laugh about it now, but it was not my best moment.
I was not being my highest and best self. Anyway, I walked back in and I very loudly asked the bank manager for all to hear for a copy of the bank applications and anything that’s given to customers that details exactly what the bank services are and then I very loudly for all to here told him exactly how I felt about how he treated us. And then they asked for his card so I could spell his name correctly when I wrote my letter to the bank and he gave it to me. And then I walked out and I went back to my husband who was waiting outside, he’s the peaceful one in the family. So I walked out and they told him, you know what? I don’t actually feel any better. Like that didn’t actually help me. And I made a mental note to remember that in the future.
So fully processing an emotion is really about me and not the other person and ultimately any variation of very loudly telling the other person how I feel doesn’t usually solve the problem. It was so clear you guys. Anyway, on the way home I went onto LinkedIn, I connected with like the vice president of customer service for the bank and I had decided that not only would I write a letter, but I would write it straight to the top and then you know what I did? I did nothing. I thought about spending any more time of my life on this and I decided it just was not worth it and I thought, know this guy is a jerk and karma will find him without me. He does not need me to find him. So I got the paperwork that I needed done and updated the records and we went to a different branch of the bank.
We had a great experience, we got it all squared away and I really wanted to share this, as I was mentioning earlier, to be an example of real life. I want this show to be an example of your life. I want to share the times that I mess up and I’m not proud of. Life is messy and I really want to embrace that even as I give you all the examples and all the different things that we talk about here and my brain does wacky things just like your brain does wacky things and we’re all growing and learning and falling down and getting back up again at the same time. And when I lead you through things, I really want you to know that I do not live at the top of a magic mountain where nothing ever goes wrong. I have not achieved Buddha levels of peace and harmony.
I am a strong willed Cuban American woman with a huge amount of patience and love who can also tell the bank guy off if he crosses the line. So there you go. I get angry. You get angry. Anger is not something we can just wish away and never experience again. And I really don’t think it should be. Anger is an emotion, just like love or fear, which has its place and can be useful and we all need to learn to manage our relationship to it to make it more productive. And so to help you do that, I’m going to walk you through the anger scale. And first I want you to imagine a scale where 10 is the highest and one is the lowest, like a rating scale. And imagine that one is neutral, two to four is different versions of mildly annoyed. Five, six and seven are different versions of upset.
And then eight, nine and 10 are angry with 10 being a maximum anger situation. Now take a moment and think about the last thing that upset you. It doesn’t necessarily have to have been with your partner, but something that you really, really got upset about and rate your anger level on a scale of one to 10. Now choose a number. Below which you will decide ahead of time, y ou will not take any action on your anger. This is how we use the anger scale. So I’m going to give you an example. Let’s see. The towels are in a complete disarray in the bathroom. Everything is, looks like it’s turned upside down and I walk into the bathroom and they see the towels being a mess. My anger level is five and for me, I don’t take any action for anything level seven or under.
So I see that it’s a five and I move out about my day. Then let’s say there’s a mess in the kitchen. It’s funny, this example when my husband listens to it because usually he’s the neat one in the kitchen and I’m the messy one in the kitchen. But let’s say that there’s a mess in the kitchen and the anger level is nine what do I do with that? When the anger level is nine. Let’s say I recommend that you wait about 15 minutes because usually if your anger really is a nine or a 10 even an eight you go into a stress cycle like fight or flight or freeze. So imagine when somebody cuts you off in traffic and you see red, like that moment where you see red you, there’s a physiological thing happening in your body and it takes your body about 15 minutes for those chemicals to be processed and to sort of recenter itself.
So engage in the self soothing practice, which could be as simple as a few deep breaths, taking a walk, watching a funny video, anything that helps you calm down in a safe and healthy way. And then after 15 minutes, you can ask yourself, is the issue still at level nine? It might not be. So check in to see where it rates. Does it still require action? If it was an eight, nine, or 10, I would check in to see if I needed to take action and then determine what that action is. Is it setting a boundary? Is it making a new decision? Is it renegotiating an agreement? Is it making a request? So to recap, and I’ll review it a couple times from different angles to make it really simple to use. On a scale of one to 10 10 being maximum madness, one being total okayness.
How mad are you about this issue? So you rate it, you give it a number, then you look, you check in, do I need to self-soothe? What activity will I engage in for soothing? And after I have returned to calm and grounded center, do I still rate it at the same number? Does it require action? What is the healthiest action I could take in regards to this? When I was at the bank, I did not take the healthiest action. I could have kept walking but it turned back around. That was not a good example. Okay, so what is the healthiest action I could take in regards to this and then identify the action and when you will take it and why is it necessary? What is the problem that taking that action will solve and be very, very, very specific. Now if you’re under a seven you do nothing.
You see that you can choose to feel angry or not and you consciously decide you can feel angry and take action or you can just feel the feeling of anger and move on. So if you’re under a seven, you do nothing about the situation and you move on and then you can really dissect it later in the following way. And I’m going to give you some questions and this is an episode where we really invite you to go to the show notes and just print out the transcript. So you have these questions and you review them for yourself. So here are some questions that can help you. Just go a little deeper. Ask yourself, why did this feel upsetting? You can even pull out a sheet of paper, dump all your thoughts on the sheet of paper, and just ask yourself, why was I upset about this?
Why did I give it the number that I gave it? What can I do in the future that would help me manage this without getting upset? In other words, how can I set myself up for success? If this is something that happens more often than not, this is one of my favorite questions. What kind of person would not be bothered by this at all? So just imagine whatever it is that happened. What kind of person would not be bothered by this at all? Can I practice being the kind of person, and then in parentheses I would say, who has the quality that would make this situation irrelevant? So can I practice being the kind of person who is relaxed? Can I practice being the kind of person who is forgiving? Can I practice being the kind of person who has so much patience that rude bank managers do not bother her?
I was not that kind of person, but could I imagine myself being a version of myself where I could become that kind of person? Why or why not? And then what is my most immediate next step? I asked one of my clients to tell me how the anger scale helped her. So you can picture it for yourself as well. And here’s what she said. She said like many things you taught me, the anger scale taught me to slow down and take a pause. This was fun. She said, goodness, that pause is so important for so many things. And then she said stopping to assess my anger level really helped me to take better control of it. She goes on to say that lately she’s been relatively calm and there have been very few instances where her husband tells her that she’s mad, but she reflects on her feelings and has clarified that when he was detecting mad it was frustration or disappointment rather than anger.
So now she has like a better grasp on those degrees. Like from a 10 to a one. Frustration is not the same as anger. Disappointment is not the same as anger, it’s lower on that anger scale. As she said, specifying the difference between those emotions has been really important for me. So I want you to just have that experience that she had, noticing how that has affected her. And one of the very big things I want you to take away from this episode is that often we think of anger like a light switch. It’s either on or off, but in reality anger is more of a spectrum, like a scale of one to 10. We can get angry that someone ate the last Oreo, but that’s completely different levels of anger than someone who was rude at the bank. For example. Once we understand that it doesn’t have to be on or off and we can experience anger by degrees, we can decide exactly what degrees are super important and we must address and what degrees we can let go of right here and now.
So I really invite you to start using the anger scale today and see how that shifts, how you experienced your own anger and how that changes the level of connection that you feel in your relationship. And I’m going to give you a really, really simple way to remember and to apply this. Number one, how angry am I on a scale of one to 10 number two, can I choose to let it go? Number three, if it’s something I must address, what is the healthiest way to address it? That’s it. That is the anger scale in a nutshell. Oh, you superstars. Now it’s time for another client celebration and I am so delighted to share this one from my client, Patty. There are a couple of things I want you to know before I read it to you. I like to share these because I know for a lot of you, you hear the word life coaching and you aren’t totally sure what that means or how it works and I think it’s so useful for you to hear in the words of my clients, the type of results we create through our work together and sometimes my clients say really beautiful things about me personally and I have to do my own mindset work.
I have to sort of shift my own perspective on standing in the power and truth of that, of what they’re sharing. And as I was reading and preparing for today’s episode, I thought about how many of us diminish our own accomplishments or feel uncomfortable standing in the power of what we have accomplished. I for sure can totally raise my hand on that one. So when they share these, I want you to know that sometimes I need to remind myself it’s okay to tell the world that I’m great at what I do. I’ve worked really hard to become great at what I do and the better I get at what I do, the more loving, healthy, happy marriages I can support and everybody wins. But it’s still a head trip to stand in full ownership of how people describe me sometimes or describe the work that we do together.
If you’ve ever received a compliment and felt uncomfortable accepting it, you can join me in doing your own work on receiving, receiving love, receiving kind words, receiving the powerful effect of your own work in the world. And I know from my type-A sisters listening to this, sometimes it can feel so hard to receive and I know that it can create challenges in a marriage too, especially when her hubby’s want to help us and we have to retrain our brains to receive that help. So here are some of the things that I say to myself. It is safe for me to stand in my power. It is safe for me to share my experience and knowledge. I am safe. Whatever happens, I can handle it and I am much, much better at receiving now. But I did have a moment awhile back when I was really bad at it and I created an exercise for myself, which is super simple and I want to share with you today and it’s really one sentence.
I receive that. That’s it. So simple. So when I would get a compliment or a nice comment, let’s say a nice comment on Facebook instead of deflecting it or giving a compliment back immediately, I would just stand in the energy of receiving and allow myself to receive the gift of those powerful, loving and kind words. If you’re in my Facebook group, the better marriage club, which is for women only, by the way, sometimes you will see me reply to kind post and I’ll say, thank you. I receive that with so much love and gratitude. If you ever feel awkward in your receiving, just practice saying thank you. I receive that, and just notice how that feels. Okay, so that was a very long introduction for this plant celebration and you will understand why as soon as they start reading it and I really want to give special thanks to my client, Patty, for helping me open up to receive even more through her kind and powerful words.
Here’s what Patty had to say about working with me. Maggie Reyes is unequivocally one of the best coaches on the planet. I’ve had a transformation during every single session over the past year. Maggie has a loving, approachable nature and I instantly felt safe in her presence. I was going through a lot of big life changes all at once and lost my belief in myself and my business. Maggie was there to hold space and blow relief into me until I could do it for myself. She really got me to understand how critical it is to speak words of what I want to see versus worst case scenarios and kept reminding me to think about what can go right. This was my biggest area of growth. Maggie also helped me redefine my role as a wife and I got to enjoy my marriage so much more as a result. What a beautiful celebration.
Thank you Patty. It is such a sacred honor to hold belief for my clients when they get wobbly, when they can’t hold it for themselves. I tell them that I always see them as their highest and best self even if they can’t at that moment and I really, really mean it. I think one of the most important things that a life coach does is hold the vision of whatever winning looks like for our clients. Now during this time when the world is shifting and changing at such a rapid pace, our marriages are shifting and changing too and things that might never have been an issue. Suddenly we have to deal and we have to deal with them now, not later. I hope you found this episode useful and you’ll start using the anger skill right away to manage any anger that comes up more effectively. I also hope you practice receiving if that’s something that you need to build your muscle on. And if you are loving the podcast, please subscribe and share it with your friends. Now remember, you need three things to have a thriving, five-star marriage perspective, partnership, and pleasure, and they are all in your control.