I recently read The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Ok, full disclosure, I started it. I couldn’t finish it. In fact, it kind of pissed me off.
Which reminded me of something my friend Michelle sent me on Instagram. It’s a reel of a man named Michael Hunter (@upspiral.life on Instagram) giving the secret hack for when someone pisses you off. He says, “Someone pissed you off. They really did something dumb and they deserved it. However, if you’re pissed off, it means that you’re pissoffable. You’re the problem.” (I’m paraphrasing.)
That’s the first step—to realize that you’re pissoffable. The second step is to change your internal state. If you’re pissoffable, it means your buttons can be pushed. It means you have big shiny buttons that anyone can push. They’re there for anyone to push.
The most powerful person in a room isn’t the loudest, it’s the most regulated person. The most regulated person in the room holds the room.
He goes on to say that becoming the most powerful person in the room is easy. Before you go into a situation with someone you know pushes your buttons, place your hand on your heart center and hold it there for five seconds. This is going to calm your vagus nerve and send a signal to your brain that says, we’re safe, we’re steady. Your heart rate will calm. Your threat response will drop and your prefrontal cortex (the adult inside you) will return to being active and accessible.
When you do that, no one can push your big shiny buttons. That person who gets your goat no longer gets your goat.
Ok, I’ll give Mel Robbins her due here. You can let that person be them. But only because you’re in control of yourself energetically and neurologically.
You can’t control the button pushers, but you can control you.
If you’ve joined me on one of my Wednesday Facebook Lives, you may have seen me leading the group in tapping the heart center, right where the thymus gland is. It’s a fast, easy, and powerful way to calm an overstimulated nervous system.
But if, like me, you can be pissoffable, you might want to try holding (or tapping) any time you know you’re going to be in a situation where your big, shiny buttons are on display for anyone to push.