Manage Your Temperament With the Walk Down the Hallway Test
Sometimes the best way to regain control of your emotions is to take a step back and think about how you might look and sound to a stranger.
To control your anger, you need to recognize your anger early on and take steps to prevent it from getting over your normal actions. The next time you’re upset about someone, Entrepreneur’s Ross McCummon asks you to take a walk down the hallway test:
The test is: what do you look like to a person walking down the hallway who sees your interaction but does not hear it? If you are acting aggressively, threateningly, or otherwise “in tune”, then this will be obvious to the observer. But if you express yourself calmly, your “I am feeling angry now and want to talk about it” will look like “I have some thoughts right now and I want to talk about it” to an outside observer.
You really can’t help but feel emotion. If you are angry, you can tell them that you are angry. But what you can really control is how you express those emotions. There is always a way to do this without drawing the attention of a passerby, fictional or not.
Remember: 5 Thoughts to Help You Calm Down in an Angry Moment | Businessman