Excerpt from The Go-Giver Influencer
“Tell me something,” said the Judge. “When was the last time someone cut you off in traffic?”
In fact, this had happened to Jackson barely twenty minutes earlier, on his way into town.
“And how did you respond?” she asked.
“Well,” said Jackson, “I called him something I’m not especially proud of and would rather not repeat.”
Her eyes danced with laughter. “Let me guess. At a respectable volume level?”
“Oh yes,” said Jackson. “Very respectable. I’m surprised it didn’t shatter my windshield.”
Now she laughed out loud. He grinned, too.
“All right,” she said. “Can you remember what you felt like at that moment?”
Jackson could, and vividly: clenched stomach, pounding heart, heat rising to his face. He described this to her, and as he did he felt an echo of the same feelings all over again.
“What if I told you,” she said, “that the other driver had just that moment learned that his child was on the way to the hospital in extremely grave condition, and he was trying to get there as fast as humanly possible?”
“But you don’t know that,” objected Jackson.
“No,” she agreed, “I don’t. Nor do you. In fact, you have no idea what was or wasn’t going on for that driver. Your reaction wasn’t based on the facts of what happened, but purely on your own feelings. Which are not always entirely trustworthy.”
“But he could have gotten us both killed!” said Jackson.
“But he didn’t,” countered the Judge. “He cut you off, and as far as the evidence is concerned, the facts stop there. More to the point is what you did.”
“What do you mean, what I did?”
“You shouted so loud you thought it might crack your windshield,” she said, smiling. “You shouted your feelings out loud, inside your car. In your meeting last Friday, you shouted them silently, inside your head. Either way, it’s still shouting. You were out of control. You could have gotten you both killed.”
Jackson was silent.
She put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay to have your feelings, Jackson. You don’t even have to change them. All the First Clause of Natural Negotiation says is, you just have to set them to the side. They can be along for the ride—but in the passenger’s seat. Because if you let your emotions drive the car, then you’re at the mercy of a drunk driver.”
The Judge poured herself more hot coffee from the carafe.
“When you go downtown at rush hour,” she said, “what do you hear? A grand cacophony of car horns—bleating, honking, blaring. It’s the quintessential urban sound signature, right?”
Jackson nodded.
“All those feelings, driving all those cars.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s no wonder the world needs judges and mediators. Conflict is everywhere. Alas. And it’s entirely understandable. It’s how we’re wired. Fight, flight, or freeze.”
After a moment Jackson said, “So if that’s how we’re wired, what do we do?”
She smiled. “We rewire. Scientists call it neuroplasticity. I call it…well?” She raised her eyebrows at him as if to say, What would you call it?
“Mastering your emotions,” he said.
She smiled. “It takes time to retrain your default response. Time and repetition. Practice. But it works. Every time you’re successful at responding by unruffling your feelings, it strikes a chord inside. It’s like thrumming the low E string on a guitar, and you are a song in the key of E. You experience a sense of trueness, a sense that says, This is me, the real me. This is how I am in the world. And it changes your brain, a little bit at a time. It wires new connections, cuts new pathways.
“In time, you make calm your default setting. And as you do, you become more you.”