I think what holds us back from letting go of anger is that we don’t forgive as long as we need to blame.  And we need to blame as long as we are unable to admit and feel the hurt from being injured by someone else.  And we are unable to feel the hurt underneath, because doing so makes us feel vulnerable and fearful of a second attack that we are convinced would be too much to bear.

Apologizing to someone you have a grudge against who has hurt you is about letting go of your anger at them.  It doesn’t mean giving a hurtful persona a second chance to hurt you again.  It also doesn’t mean doing this with a violent or abusive person, who you’d do best to steer clear of.

One of the best approaches I know to short circuit your emotions when you’re upset and before you become angry (which is the prelude to a grudge) is to:

1. Say to yourself, “I’m reacting!”
2. Answer the question to yourself: “What am I feeling hurt or disappointed about right now?” (If you can’t get through the anger to the hurt or at least to the disappointment, it may be because the narcissistic part of your personality is too strong).
3. Answer the question to yourself: “What is my evidence that the other person meant to hurt or disappoint me? And might I be taking something personal that wasn’t meant that way? And if I am taking it personally and it is not meant that way, I need to let it go.”

Another approach to nip anger in the bud comes from one of my friends, Bob Pratt, President of Volunteers of America Los Angeles, is one of the least grudge holding and most even tempered people I know.  I asked him his secret.  He told me, “Whenever somebody does something hurtful to me, I assume innocence and that they are doing it, because someone has done something hurtful to them.  So, the person who acts with Road Rage to you is behaving that way, because something bad happened to them. My view is one should stop evil people when you encounter them, but there really are very few evil people in the world.  Everyone else is flawed including you and me.  And just as I would like people to cut me some slack because of my flaws, I have a policy of doing the same to them.”

I converted a Road Rager to a friend some years ago by virtue of the lesson that Bob has learned (i.e by having them see that my bad driving was because I was having a bad day).  I was having one of the most frustrating days of my life where it seemed that everything I did went wrong.  I was driving on Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles as it enters into the San Fernando Valley in a place called Sherman Oaks.  I was so preoccupied that I cut off this older 6 foot 5 guy in his pick up truck, not once, but twice.  After the second time, he pulled in front of me and stopped and I was so dazed I just stopped when he did.  I could see that his wife was telling him not to go out to confront me.  He didn’t listen and stormed out of his truck to start a fight with me.  He came over beside my window and started swearing and yelling at me.  I was so out of it, I opened my driver side window to hear what he was saying.  He continued to make threatening gestures at me.

When he paused for a moment I said to him, “Have you ever had such an awful day where everything has blown up in your face, and that you just wish someone would come along and shoot you to put you out of your misery? Are you that person?”

He immediately changed and said, “What?”

I repeated, “Have you ever had such an awful day where everything has blown up in your face, and that you just wish someone would come along and shoot you to put you out of your misery? Are you that person?”

He then said in a calming voice, “Hey, it’s okay, calm down, it’s all going to be alright.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I blurted back, “you haven’t had a day where everything you have done turned to crap.  Really, I’m not kidding.”

He then proceeded to try to calm me down and reassure me some more.  After a couple minutes he went back into his truck, and waved to me in the rear view mirror as if to say, “Now settle down, it’s going to be alright.”  And then he drove away and in a few moments I did the same.

Wife: “Before I become a burden on my kids, I’m going to take a bottle of pills.”
Husband: “Too chancy, I’d go with a couple of guns.”
- husband and wife after caring for two parents with Alzheimer’s for three years

This is a response I am hearing from an increasing number of white middle class* baby boomers as they face the prospect of becoming old, enfeebled and a financial and emotional burden on their children.

It may also be that they are projecting the burden, drain and resentment they are feeling or have felt towards their own aging parents who have become enfeebled and require nearly round the clock care. And knowing how they have felt towards their own parents, they don’t want their children to carry the burden of taking care of them and feeling the same way towards them.

It may be prescient of them that knowing how impatient** they have been with their own parents and that their Millennial kids have no patience whatsoever, the idea that becoming mentally and physically enfeebled and dependent on these children portends an absolutely horrendous quality of life for both them and their children.

Is there a solution so that baby boomers might go “gently into that good night” instead of taxing their patience challenged adult children? Most likely what will happen is that when the middle class Millennials grow up and are in the position of having to take care of their elderly baby boomer parents, they will find a way (as their baby boomer parents have) to help pay for their care and delegate their caring to third world caretakers who still retain God’s gift of patience towards those in their care (which is why many a middle class baby boomer declares such caretakers “Godsends”).

One highly unlikely alternative is that Millennials will somehow develop patience to calmly follow the admonition of Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement in caring for dying and infirm parents: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Why so unlikely? Maybe it’s because their baby boomer parents who were the last generation to abandon patience in favor of the race to get more, sooner have been such effective role models.

In closing I am reminded of a quote from Dr. Milton Greenblatt from the 1970′s:

First we are children to our parents,
then parents to our children,
then parents to our parents,
then children to our children.

But then again that was in a galaxy far, far away and a time long, long ago when patience was not just a virtue… it was actually possible.

* This phenomenon may be more of an issue for the white middle class baby boomer, because family is everything for Third World people and the wealthy can and do pay for everything from people (often Third World) to raise their children to caretakers to provide care and loving caring to their aging and infirm parents.

** Another factor involved with the people I have heard these complaints from is the combination of Impatience + Difficult Parent (difficult as in “high maintenance, as in difficult to please, easy to upset).  It’s easy to be patient with parents who are “low maintenance” (easy to please, difficult to upset), generous and gracious even as they lose much of their physical and mental faculties. The takeaway from this is that what goes around, comes around and if you are the one who is “high maintenance,” you might want to change that.

And if this is not sobering enough read how Older Americans Greatest Fear is Outliving Their Money.

Also see: “How Could She Wish Death on the Mother She Loved?”

Many parents may disagree on how to raise their children, but few would disagree that Child A below entering college or the work force has a much better chance for a good life than Child B.

Child A

• Focused
• Resilient
• Persistent
• Passionate
• Goal-oriented
• Handles Disappointment Well
• Doesn’t Take Self Too Seriously
• Coachable

Child B

• Scattered
• Quits
• Bails
• Bored
• No Goals
• Is Easily Upset
• Hypersensitive
• Know-it-all

12 Steps to a More Self-Confident Child*

1. Print up this blog for your children and the article from Divorce Magazine (from which these charts are excerpted) for your spouse (or ex-spouse).
2. Ask your children and your spouse if you can sit down with them to discuss something that relates to your children’s futures and is on your mind.
3. Have your children read this blog and have you and your spouse read the Divorce Magazine article and look at the chart re: Child A and Child B (which will help you be aware of how you and your relationship with your spouse influence your children’s personalities).
4. Ask your children if they think that Child A will not only be more successful and happier, but will be looked upon more positively by friends and others who may be that child’s teachers, boss or even future boy friend or girl friend (Hopefully they will agree).
5. Ask your children how they believe they would be viewed with regard to the traits in both Child A and Child B by their friends and those people in their life (including you) who have the power to grade them (teachers), accept them into college, hire them, promote them and give them raises.
6. Ask your children to describe what they do or don’t do that would cause those people to see them that way.
7. If your children answer that they are more like the insecure Child B rather than the confident Child A, ask them if they would like to become more like Child A? (Hopefully they will again say, “Yes”).
8. If your children answer, “Yes,” ask them what they specifically would need to do differently to become more like Child A and what you and their other parent will need to do differently to help them become that way.
9. Ask your spouse if they will participate in working together with you to help your children become more like Child A.
10. Set up a plan with one observable positive “do” behavior and one observable negative “stop doing” behavior for your children to commit to changing every month (after a month that behavior will become a habit and if they pick too many behaviors to change, they will not be able to do it) and keep doing this until they become more like Child A than Child B.
11. Set a date every two weeks to check in and to see how they are coming along with that change and for your children and you and your spouse to offer refinements to improve those selected behaviors even further.
12. Also include you and your spouse changing your behaviors according to what your children say you each could do differently to help them.

* This approach was inspired by the work and ideas of Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s preeminent executive coaches and author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful. Check that book out if you want to improve your interpersonal skills and greatly increase your career success.

I don’t think parents have lost the “will” to connect, guide and teach their children; it’s that too often they just don’t know the “way” to do it.

Over the years I have come upon tips that not only help parents connect with their children, but also help teach them self-reliance and prepare them for life. Here are a few that will help you connect and also teach your child perspective, perseverance, and patience:

Perspective: The real bedtime story. If you still read a story to your children at night, add this exercise. Ask them: “What was the best and worst thing that happened to you today?” Listen to what they say, and respond with “Wow, that’s great” to the good stuff, and “Gee, really, I’m so sorry you felt upset by that” to the bad stuff. Don’t give advice unless they ask for it. Then ask them: “What are you most looking forward to tomorrow and what are you most nervous about? Hear them out the same way as with the first question. Follow up this exercise by telling your story. This exercise helps your child develop perspective to see that both good and bad things happen every day.

Perseverance: When your children tell you about a situation that has clearly upset, scared, angered, or hurt them, resist the temptation to quickly reassure them. Instead, give them a word for what they seem to be feeling by saying: “That must have scared/angered/hurt you, didn’t it?” If they agree, calmly ask them: “How scared/angry/upset, etc. did you feel?” They may only say, “Really bad” or “Very,” but in that moment of saying it to you, they will feel safe, less alone, relieved, and they may even cry. This is a great way of establishing a sense of comfort and calmness in your children after which they will be more open to suggestions and advice. The formula is: Comfort first, Coach second. This exercise will help your children develop the ability to comfort and calm themselves when they are older and enable them to persevere through rough times.

Patience: Do this exercise once a week with your entire family when you’re having dinner together. Ask everyone to talk about something they did in spite of not wanting to do it. You should start the ball rolling. For example, you might say: “I went to this meeting I didn’t want to go to, tried to make the best of it and actually met someone that might help me in my job, and I never would have met that person had I not gone to the meeting.” Then have your husband and kids share something. This exercise helps your children develop tolerance, cooperation skills, and flexibility. It also will make them accept that people have to do things that they don’t always want to do, and because everyone has to do this it’s fair and part of life-and having patience when things don’t go your way works better than having a tantrum.

These steps do not excuse you from spending a certain amount of “face time” with your children (perhaps equal to the “face time” you need to spend with investors when a telephone call won’t suffice) and even experts are not immune from your dilemma.

I remember years ago when my kids were small. They had a nickname for me: “Hi kids, bye kids, love you kids.” I used to laugh when they would teasingly taunt me, but then I realized it wasn’t funny.

Put a smile on your kid’s face

for-give-ness: Pronunciation: \-ˈgiv-nəs\ – noun – The act of letting go of one’s anger towards someone for having hurt, wounded, betrayed, injured or harmed one. Forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting the harm someone has done, your disappointment in them or giving them a second chance to harm you, but it does mean letting go of the anger one attaches to the hurtful incident and of begrudging the person for it.

With Tiger Woods’ apology, forgiveness is in the air.  But until it is also in people’s actions it is just words.

One of my favorite and most revealing openings in my talks, that I owe to Dave Hibbard, Founder and CEO of Dialexis who learned it from Caroline Myss author of, Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason (Hay House, $24.95), is to ask: “If I could give you the secret to happiness and peace of mind in one word, would you want to know what it is?”

Even to skeptical groups, most people are intrigued enough to reply, “Yes.”

“If you don’t agree with it, you can summarily reject it; but if you do agree with it, do you promise to embrace it and put it into action in your life?” I continue.

Since they are given a way out and since this seems like a logical request, this often triggers a, “Yes” from the group.

I then take out a piece of paper, write a word on it, fold up the piece of paper and hand it to someone in the group.  The message is then handed from one person to the next.

One by one the majority of the group will read the word, pause, take a deep breath and give out a big sigh of agreement.

The word is, “Forgiveness.”

The exercise does not stop there.

I ask them next:

1. “With a show of hands, how many of you when you read the word, ‘forgiveness,’ rejected it?”
2. “How many of you immediately thought of people you needed to forgive?”
3. “How many of you immediately thought of people you need to ask forgiveness from?”
4. “How many of you thought a combination of forgiving people and asking forgiveness from them?”
5. “How many of you thought more about forgiving than asking forgiveness?”
6. “How many of you thought more about asking forgiveness than forgiving others?”

I then explain to them:

1. If you rejected the word, you are most likely a “dyed in the wool” narcissist, because you feel entitled to hold onto negative feelings towards anyone you choose to and you are very poor relationship material.  You shouldn’t be in a relationship and I would advise others to not be in a relationship with you.
2. If you thought either exclusively or more about people you needed to forgive than to ask forgiveness from, you are most likely someone that has narcissistic features and feels entitled.  You can be in a relationship, but you are high maintenance. I would advise people to try a relationship with you, but to be on the look out for getting burned out being with you at which point they need to stop deluding themselves that you’ll change and just get out.
3. If you thought more about asking forgiveness than being forgiving, you are not narcissistic, are willing to take responsibility for your actions that hurt others.  You are low maintenance and the best relationship material.  I would advise others to be in a relationship with you.

Where are you when it comes to forgiveness?  If you want to improve your relationships share this blog with your partner, children, parents, siblings and friends and ask them where on the continuum of “Unforgiving to Forgiving” they see you.  If they see you as being more unforgiving than forgiving, ask them the effect it has had on them regarding being in a relationship with you. If they see you as more unforgiving than forgiving, stop it.

If you are so unforgiving and don’t care about any of this, realize that there is another word that is synonymous when you get to the end of your life.  That word is “bitter.”

“You look like hell and I don’t think it’s because you’re dying; you’ve been dying as long as I’ve known you,” I said to Max (real name withheld) the terminally ill tough movie mogul I’d been doing house calls on and with whom I had developed a no b.s. rapport.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything important in my life,” he told me.

“What?” I protested, trying to ease his mind as he closed in on the end of his life.  “Think of the hospital wing named after you, the jobs you created, the amazing films that will live on forever.”

“Don’t con a con man, especially when he’s dying,” he snapped back.  “I have all the love that money can buy and that’s all it’s worth.   I also have several ex-partners and two ex-wives I beat up on financially and a bunch of trust fund kids from three marriages, who I guess I love, but who are all selfish and irresponsible.”

“So if I continued the list of all your achievements, it wouldn’t work,” I asked.

“No, not now.  I think I just might have outsmarted myself,” Max concluded.

Now having trained FBI and police hostage negotiators and appeared on CNN and national radio stations on the day of the Columbine shootings and again on 9/11 to take calls, I am pretty quick on my feet.

“Really,” I said. “You know there are a couple of very uncomplimentary words in psychology that I’ve been thinking that might apply to you, but I didn’t think I’d get to use them given that you’re dying.  Those words are narcissist and psychopath.  And you know, you might just be getting exactly what you deserve.  You did use people for most of your life and took pleasure in doing it. You were a master manipulator.  In fact you made Citizen Kane look like a boy scout. And another thing,” I stopped when he abruptly interrupted me.

“Stop already! Okay! I get it.  You’ve made your point,” he said emphatically.

“And that point is?” I asked.

“This is not a good time for me to be asking these questions,” he said with a broad smile that indicated our rapport was still in tact despite my verbal assault.

“CORRECT! You weren’t perfect, but neither were you the most evil person on earth.  You messed up, but you did a lot of good.  Drop it already. Let’s go for pain control, morphine drip and then get out of Dodge,” I urged.

“Do I get to go out with my boots on?” Max quipped.

“Sure, it’s your movie,” I couldn’t resist having the last word.

Three weeks later Max died…with his slippers on.

Why is it that so many high achievers stink at relationships? High achievers are good at clearly selecting a goal and tenaciously staying on track until they achieve it and scattering anything that might derail them.  Other people’s feelings or being mindful of their own lack of tack (which taken together we refer to as Emotional Intelligence) would distract them.  Most high achievers are not insensitive, they are simply NOT sensitive.

To be good at a relationship, you need to listen to the other person, care enough to make the effort to understand what they are saying (i.e. “relate” to it) and then communicate back to them in a way that demonstrates you have taken into consideration what you have understood.  Not only is that off putting to a high achiever, but the “run on sentence” I just used to explain it was more than they could even pay attention to.

One of my close friends, attorney Harry Glazer was telling me recently how when his kids are happy he’s happy and when they’re not, he’s not.  My wife’s version of this is: “You’re only as happy as your most unhappy child.”  I agree with both of them.

Harry told me that he knows that there is at least one thing that makes his kids smile each day, but he often doesn’t hear about that because they mainly call him or text him about a problem or to ask for something.

He thought about this and responded to this situation by each day sending out a text to each of his young adult children, age 19 and 22, asking them: “What made you smile today?”  And he meant anything such as seeing their refrigerator had their favorite food, getting a great parking with money in the meter, noticing one of the many inane things that show up on their facebook page, a hot shower after being out in the cold.

At first his children thought he was just being a nerd or goofy, but he persisted.  He has also taken to sending them a quote for the day to think about that might relate to something they are going through. Over time this has made a difference in his relationships with them.  He thinks that exchange helps put an additional smile on their faces as well as his own because a) it forces them to pause and remember something happy each day; b) by sending their answer to their dad, they know they are making him happy which underneath all their daily problems, they enjoy doing.

Another friend of mine, Marshall Bitkower, a  Los Angeles based attorney, has started a blog entitled, MYBLOGMITZVAH, where he invites people to share not what made them smile, but what they did to put a smile on someone else’s face.

I hope you’ll visit his page and share what you did today to make someone else smile.  The world could certainly use it.

I hope this post puts a smile on your face as imagining you reading it has put one on mine.

An athlete who performs well under pressure is not the same as a hero who performs well and does the right thing under pressure.  Fame and money does not a hero make.  You may say, “Yeah, but teens and young adults will continue to see these rich and famous superstar athletes and superstar celebrities — both with full sets of tawdry baggage – as heroes.”

I wonder about that.  If that self-centered, lying, cheating and arrogant athlete or celebrity or politician is acting very similarly to the dad (let’s face it, most of the fallen heroes are men) who lied to your mom and abandoned you, it can only be a matter of time before you make the connection.

Recently I had a discussion with some colleagues about great leaders and came to the conclusion that what they have in common –which also makes them heroes.  What they seem to have are the following:

• the JUDGMENT to know the right thing to do
• the INTEGRITY to do it
• the CHARACTER to stand up to those who don’t do it
• the COURAGE to stop those who won’t do it

Our discussion then turned to the topic of heroes in sports and with the fall of Tiger Woods we were hard pressed to come up with one.  After thirty minutes of pulling our hair out, we came up with someone.

John Wooden was the NCAA’s winningest basketball coach, leading UCLA to 10 national championships in 12 years.  In fact many of his players who went on to be superstars in the NBA will say that playing under Coach Wooden was the highlight of their careers.

I might be wrong about this, but I believe John Wooden once said that the measure of a great leader, and I will add a true hero, is that years after the people who worked for or under them have left, they come back to tell that special person about their children, their careers and what they did with their lives.

Who’s your hero? What qualities did they possess?  Have you thanked them recently (or their family, if they have died)?

Both narcissists and people with Asperger like features are goal minded to a fault, and both can view other people more as functions or vehicles to achieve that goal instead of as people with feelings.  However a critical difference between the two is that a narcissist doesn’t care if they hurt you or your feelings (and the truly malignant ones may even take delight in doing so), whereas someone with Asperger’s like features would prefer not to.

My advice to people who live with malignant narcissists is to get out and to those who live with narcissists to demand they get help or else you are going to painfully lonely and making excuses for them to friends, family and you children forever.

However if you live with someone with Asperger like features it’s a little more complicated.  For instance even though you may feel how they treat you is meant personally, if what they do is not meant personally, it’s not right for you to take it personally.  That means it is neither fair nor reasonable to treat someone who is just not sensitive (i.e. they are not doing it intentionally) as if they were someone who is insensitive (i.e. they are intentionally not sensitive).  Instead of reacting and talking at them, be calm and talk to or with them and focus on their specific observable behavior(s) and the effect it has on you and what it causes you to do in response, which you don’t want to do.  Furthermore, give them a specific alternative observable behavior to do instead, because in these areas that they are weak, they may not be teachable, but they are often trainable if you speak to them in a respectful way.

If you are the person with Asperger like features you may be dumbfounded since your intention is never to hurt the people you care about, or for that matter to hurt anyone.  Rather your intention is just to move projects forward towards the goal you have in mind.

I remember the time an entrepreneur with Asperger like feature brought in his 14 year old daughter at the insistence of his wife, who told him in no uncertain terms, “You need to go see Dr. Goulston, because your daughter can’t stand you.”

When they came in, she clearly didn’t want to be there and pulled into a corner of my L-shaped couch and he said in a mechanical way how much he loved his daughter and would never want to upset her.  It was clear by her body language that his analytical way of speaking only reinforced her feelings of anger towards him.

Now since I am a bit on the intuitive side, I imagined the following scenario happening at home (none of which she had told me) and said to her: “What’s it like when he drives you crazy and you scream at him from your room, ‘Get out! Leave me the f— alone!’  And then when he does, you lie down on your bed and ‘flip him off’ aiming your finger at the door you just slammed on him?’”

Apparently my intuition hit a bullseye and she promptly pulled into a fetal position and started sobbing and rocking herself in complete pain.  At that point her father looked at her (while she writhed in pain), was bewildered, then looked at me and started to cry.  I don’t think he knew what crying was, because he touch his tears and looked at them on his fingers as if they were blood.  He then looked at me, trying very hard to comprehend and said: “My little girl is in awful pain and I think I somehow caused it.  But I love her and that’s the last thing I would ever want to do.”

That breakthrough was the beginning of not only a different relationship with her daughter, but a different relatedness.

The sad fact of this story is that I don’t think the pain that his daughter was feeling and his confusion about how he was causing it is terribly unique.

***

Dear blog readers, Please accept my deep and sincere thank you.  Your support has been instrumental to my book reaching #1 in four categories at amazon and it being reviewed the current TIME magazine.

Catch an upcoming free webcast on: “The Simple Way to Get Through to Difficult People” at Career Coaches: Special Interest Group on Wednesday, October 14 from 12-1 PM EDT.