"Quiet Strength" - Will it make the situation better?

As you now know, I learned a lot from coach Dungy in his book, Quiet Strength. I hope to acquire a copy of his next book, Uncommon very soon.

Another theme from the book that struck me personally was a lesson Tony learned from his dad and tries to follow in his own life. Whenever life was unfair or difficult, and Tony or one of his siblings was tempted to strike back in anger or frustration, his dad would reply, "Will it make the situation better?" As you can imagine, life in the NFL brings many opportunities to express frustration and anger.

Tony writes, "I don't often lose my cool with officials. Whenever I start, I usually hear my dad's voice asking me, "Will it make the situation better?" I've learned that while it may feel good to vent, it's better to listen to my dad's wisdom and rely on quiet strength instead."

I see two key ingredients in this difficult life lesson. First, it deals with the deception of feelings and emotions. Second, it encourages us to think less of ourselves and more of others. Let me expound on these for a minute.

The subject of emotions and feelings is a difficult one for me. I don't show much emotion. Unlike Chandler Bing, I am not dead inside; I feel emotion, but I don't often show them. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think there must be a balance between epxressing some, but not all, of what I am feeling. Emotions are tricky little buggers because we can and we can't control them. Imagine this scenario: the phone rings and upon answering it, I receive some really bad news. Instantly I feel a random combination of sadness, disappointment, fear, and even anger. Those feelings rush through me and I can't not feel them. (And I believe that anyone who tells me that I can control how I feel is lying to me.) However, I can control what happens next. I might want to punch a wall as an expression of anger or cry as an exprssion of sadness. And at that point, I do have a choice. I can control how I respond to the emotions I am experiencing. I don't have to punch the wall!!! (And I believe that anyone who tells me that I can't control my reponses is really just deceiving themselves and excusing their own bad behavior.)

The tricky business of emotions is that the feeling of negative emotions is almost always followed by the temptation to respond in a bad way. Then I naturally assume that that since I can't control my feelings, I also can't control my reponse to these feeelings. However, as coach Dungy shares here- YES, I CAN CONTROL MY RESPONSE TO THE EMOTIONS I AM EXPERIENCING! (I wrote that in all caps for myself- not to preach to you)

The insight I gained from this lesson is that our normal response to difficult situations is to please ourselves. When I feel sad, I want to cry so that I feel better. When I am happy, it just feels good to smile. These examples are not bad, but let's be honest: these are self-pleasing actions. When I feel angry with someone- I am tempted to scream and yell back at them- but I am really doing it to make myself feel better. Coach Dungy's father encouraged him to step back, think less of himself, and look at the situation. Rather than exchanging tit for tat, jab for jab, and hurt for hurt (and essentially make the situation worse), Wil Dungy enouraged his children to forego their own need for relief and respond in a way to heal the relationship or at least push the situation in a better direction.

Wow- another life lesson for me. When I am in a difficult situation, experiencing some negative emotions, and feeling like adding to the negativity, the challenge is to stop and ask myself, "What can I do to make the situation better?"

So here we go. Maybe sometime I post an update of how that is going.