How to Process the Angers of Your Past to Step Into Your Destiny (Episode 19)

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead (00:56.246)
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. I am your host, Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by the one and only George B. Thomas. How the heck are you this morning?

George B. Thomas (01:04.959)
Liz, I am doing great. It is the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. So we have had a long weekend of food and family and potential opportunities to be angry. And so I am glad that we're talking about anger and all things, angriness today. So yeah, I'm excited. I've got my coffee and I'm ready to rock and roll.

Liz Moorehead (01:30.434)
That's so funny.

even draw that parallel between Thanksgiving is an incubator for anger and the fact that we were recording this morning. So to those of you who are listening to this feed the day it goes live, welcome. We hope you survived the holiday weekend and if you're listening like Friday... Jesus. Oh my gosh.

George B. Thomas (01:50.167)
Black Friday.

Liz Moorehead (02:03.826)
in the way that there's a bit of a stickiness to it, right? You know, we've talked about fear across numerous episodes as well as dedicated episodes. And one of the big themes that came out of our conversations of fear is that if you're not careful, it can be something that can become a controlling and extremely destructive force in your life. Anger is another type of emotion where...

I would say there is a similar thematic element there. That, think about yourself, right? Whether you are someone who is known to hold grudges or someone who knows somebody who holds grudges. Anger is a weight that you can very easily carry with you throughout your life. And that's really what we're gonna be talking about today is...

What is our relationship with anger? What happens when we don't do the work of processing the angers of the past in order to step into our destinies, our beyond our default lives? So George, I wanna start today's conversation by asking you, what has your relationship looked like with anger over the years?

George B. Thomas (03:16.479)
Well, first of all, it's been messy, to be honest with you. And Liz, I'm glad you brought up the fact of fear.

Liz Moorehead (03:19.402)
Hahaha

George B. Thomas (03:24.135)
and anger and both of them feeling like they have some similar traits because both are needed. Both are not 100% bad, but dependent upon when they show themselves are in a positive or negative light in our life. Now listen, I shared freely in maybe multiple episodes of the podcast that, you know, one of my defining moments was somebody that I...

Liz Moorehead (03:28.803)
Mm-hmm.

George B. Thomas (03:52.631)
love and adore and is just like the most peaceful, loving, genuine, amazing human saying that I had an anger issue that I was an angry person.

You know, and I've said before, no, I'm not. No, no. You know, how dare you say that to me? And how why would she say that? Like, but then realizing like, oh, my gosh. So so it has been a really interesting journey. But Liz, as we kind of get into this conversation, I think that it's important for us and the listeners to have this basic understanding of how bad anger is for us. Right. And this is why I knew that

Liz Moorehead (04:08.343)
Really?

George B. Thomas (04:37.925)
This had to be part of a podcast conversation. Eventually it needed to be part of a book. It just is a very interesting thing. And again, like many of the other things we've talked about, forgiveness, right? And anger also have some similar traits. So Mark Twain has a quote that he gave us that anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel.

in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. Now, that to me is very eye opening. If you think about you as the vessel, you as storing it, you as actually harming yourself more than where it's going to eventually bubble out. Now, we'll talk about that bubbling out as we move forward. But now that I've said that, I had my own little battle with storing anger. Right. And that's why I can have that story of like

Aunt Nancy and George, you have an issue. And my wife saying, you know, she thinks you have an issue. And me having to deal with this. What's fun in this topic is that, again, it's tied to this idea of fear. It's tied to this idea of forgiveness. It's tied to these other...

elements that we're talking about. And I'm curious how many times in how many podcast episodes will actually say this is connected to this or that is connected to that. And I think it's going to be a lot because while we don't normally sit down and draw the lines or make the connections, when we actually take time to plan out.

what we're trying to do, which is live a life beyond the default. All of a sudden, you start to realize, oh, when I tip this domino, this happens. When I tip this domino, this happens. And so I have to ask the listeners a question because this is a fun topic. It's an important topic. Um, Liz, I'll ask you even you and the listeners, um, do you like angry people?

Liz Moorehead (06:52.162)
No, well, that's a tricky question to answer. And maybe this is where I'm taking too much of a nuanced approach to what you're asking me. I mean, the binary answer is no. Like if we're talking about an angry person, that means someone who's defining characteristic is, I am angry, there is anger all the time. What I find interesting though is that when I think about the people I know who,

George B. Thomas (06:53.175)
Mmm. Mmm!

George B. Thomas (07:07.145)
Right.

Liz Moorehead (07:19.874)
have maybe an unbalanced relationship with anger in their lives. You know how they talk about in health like comorbidities? You know, you very rarely just have this, you will also likely have this. Anger has a similar thing to it, where the people I know who have that unbalanced relationship with anger, they typically, I don't typically characterize them as angry, I typically characterize them as negative. Sometimes it's, you know,

George B. Thomas (07:46.202)
Mmm.

Liz Moorehead (07:49.354)
just constantly looking at things in a negative way. Sometimes it's anger, but for the most part, I don't, angry people, it's not that I dislike them. I feel like I don't even get a chance to get to know them because their anger is this big, massive buffer around who they really are.

George B. Thomas (08:05.027)
Uhhhhhh-

Oh, you're taking this to the next level. So you said my binary answer is no. And then you said, I feel like I don't even get a chance to get to know them. So here's where I would turn it. So when you're an angry person, because you're storing it up, do others like you? Binary answer, probably not. But then what I would even say is, so when you're an angry person,

How hard is it to even get to know yourself? Because you're trying to stay away from yourself because you realize that you're an angry person from storing it up. You see, this makes the internal and external relationships hard.

Anger does in the wrong way at the wrong time. Again, I'm not saying it's 100% wrong. We'll get into that. But I want you to think about that binary answer that you gave and listeners, you can, I don't know.

Unless you email me, right? George at BeyondYourDefault.com or Liz at BeyondYourDefault.com. If you email us and say, hey, my answer, do you like angry people is X, Y, Z? We don't know. But we have to assume that it was no. And maybe something very much like Liz was thinking. Now, more importantly, if you're angry, do you like yourself? Many times not.

George B. Thomas (09:32.915)
Well, that's interesting, isn't it? One of the greatest unlocks in this journey of a life lived beyond your default is not liking ourselves, but loving ourselves. We've talked about that in a previous episode, right? And so literally what I'm trying to paint a picture of as we get into this is that it, it

It's extremely hard to do when you're filled with anger is understand this relationship between fear, this relationship between forgiveness, this relationship between loving yourself. Like anger is almost like the center point of several very important pieces. Or the understanding of how and when to use anger is the center point of many of these very important pieces that we've talked about.

on this show. So Liz, I'm excited to unpack what I've learned along the way on my life. And any questions that you might have, I'm open, but know that when I say I'm open, I'm scared. Because I am going to try to come to this conversation as open and as authentic about things that have happened, good and bad in my life.

Liz Moorehead (10:39.214)
That's okay.

George B. Thomas (10:49.607)
around these times where I've stored up anger, how maybe it's bubbled out, things like that.

Liz Moorehead (10:58.318)
Can you talk to me about a specific moment in your life where you realized anger was playing an outsized role in your life? Because you've talked about it a bit in the abstract. You've mentioned, you know, folks may have pointed to you and said, hey, you're an angry guy, but take us to a specific moment.

George B. Thomas (11:14.339)
I mean, I can give you multiple. That's the problem with me and where I was in life is that I could give you multiple reasons why it was perfectly okay for me to be angry and to be a dick. Like...

Liz Moorehead (11:32.062)
talking about the moment that you realized that ang- like you're having that moment and you're starting to realize, oh jeez, I got a problem.

George B. Thomas (11:43.943)
Yeah, um, the time that I realized I had a problem was the time that I was uber aggressive, uh, in a moment that shouldn't have been even close to what it was, um, it could have been a conversation, but it turned physical. And we're talking to the point where

I realized after I let the anger control me that it was a defining moment in my life that I potentially could lose everything and I went from anger to fear in point three seconds because of the actions that I had taken.

Liz Moorehead (12:29.89)
What happened? What is the situation that occurred?

Liz Moorehead (12:37.87)
because you're being kind of vague.

George B. Thomas (12:39.407)
I am, I'm being vague on purpose, yes. That's probably.

more of a conversation for a therapist couch, to be honest with you. And it's something that I have dealt with. And I'm not trying, listen listeners, I am not trying to create intrigue. I'm not trying to create mystery. I am trying to be as honest and authentic as I can with things that I'm ready to share that have happened in my life.

Liz Moorehead (13:10.018)
Well, to be fair, we've talked about in previous episodes the importance of holding your own boundaries. So needless to say, there was a moment of anger where physicality was brought into it, okay? Yeah.

George B. Thomas (13:20.416)
Yes.

Yes. And again, we're talking like, it's just terrible. It's terrible. And it's the one thing, Liz, and I'm not big on taking things back in my life, but it's the one thing if I could remove from my life, I would remove it from my life. And I have been trying to fix it internally and externally ever since the day that it happened. OK, now what?

caused me to get to that point, what caused me to, you know, make a choice that could dramatically impact my life in a negative way was this idea of stored up anger. Listen, I was pissed.

And I kind of joking said I could list out a whole bunch of reasons why, but I was mad at my math teacher for telling me I would never amount to anything. And I had never unpacked that. And I wasn't to the point where that was the fuel who I was going to become yet. I was I was.

very frustrated that I came from divorced parents. I hadn't unpacked the fact that it was probably actually better. I didn't have this new perception that I have, which by the way, I'm gonna go into new perceptions here in a second. I was mad that I had historically been divorced myself because it was something that I said that I would never do because I came from divorced parents. I'm not going to do that. And so this idea of learning from the process

George B. Thomas (14:58.341)
pain. And so like, we are at a moment in time where I'm mad at all of these things and probably more. And

My math teacher, instead of it being angry at him and thanking him because it was the fuel that turned me who I am in today, instead of this reframing of God knew I needed two sets of parents, instead of this angry scenario of why me? Why am I the only one? Why did they break the mold? You know, I have brothers here, brothers there, but you know, like, and this angry at myself.

because you know, I did something that I said that I would never do. And so it was just this kind of was this bubbling cauldron of toxicity waiting to explode.

And unfortunately, it did in the way that it did because I wasn't equipped with many of the things that we're going to talk about today and many of the things that I've plugged in of like how not to get that way. You know, I had an example during this weekend, to be honest with you, where it was the dumbest stuff ever. It was over a light switch. And I lost my mind because I wanted the light on.

but somebody turned the light off and I'm like, leave it on, leave it on. And I was just aggressive, but I had to come back a day later and apologize to the whole family for being angry. And what's crazy is we were getting ready for this episode. And I literally put an apology out to the whole family. I said, first of all, I'm sorry for being angry last night. It had absolutely nothing to do with the light switch.

George B. Thomas (16:47.547)
I'm angry with myself right now because I went on a journey where I lost 79 pounds and I was a 254 pounds and now I'm back up to my beginning weight of where I was when I actually went on that journey and I'm angry at myself right now. And I let it come out in a way that it shouldn't have come out and I apologize. Liz, that guy never existed.

the guy that like would apologize for the thing and understand and diagnose like, oh, that was bad anger. That was not good anger. And so I share that because I want everybody to know that I'm while I have got many of the things that we're going to talk about in my tool belt. I'm still a normal guy. I'm still trying to figure it out. I still get upset in the moment.

because of things that have nothing to do with the moment.

Liz Moorehead (17:45.578)
Well, I mean, if anything, listeners may recall from our last episode, you and I are very, very much works in progress. We are very much walking these journeys ourselves and our own individual paths. Although I do appreciate that you brought back the nice mug for this week.

George B. Thomas (18:02.38)
Yeah, I need a little bit of Christmas joy. I need a little bit of nice in my life. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (18:10.731)
So let's talk about this correlation between anger and fear for a moment because we've mentioned this already, you brought it up here as well. Like fear, anger can become a ruling destructive force in our lives if we keep it unchecked. How does that happen?

George B. Thomas (18:29.861)
And man, I wish I had like this great...

George B. Thomas (18:35.187)
like scientific, you know, theory of why, but my honest opinion and what I've done is I've just ignored it. And if I haven't ignored it, I've actually added to it. Like, and what I mean by that is so many times we get stuck, and that's an interesting word, considering that one of the things that we're trying to do is get people unstuck anyway, let me just move forward. You get stuck in this mental pattern.

of like, it was this way, was it? It was this thing, really? And you start to tell this story and this narrative around this thing. And all of a sudden, that's like your perceived reality of the thing.

Meanwhile, you haven't taken the time to actually unpack it and ask some very important questions around it. You've just fed into now this perceived reality of the thing that happened that... And it might have been that thing. Or it might not have. Or we do the old ostrich thing. Which, by the way, I don't even think ostriches really stick their head in the ground. I need to Google that to find out for sure. Yeah, but it's...

Liz Moorehead (19:45.878)
I don't think they do either, but for right now, it's fine.

George B. Thomas (19:48.971)
But people say it, right? But we stick our head in the ground, right? And we ignore it. And we feel like if we ignore it, it'll go away. And then anger's a real interesting thing. It's one of those things when you ignore it, it doesn't go away. It just festers. And it starts to melt down the internal portions of your brain and your body and your spirit and your psyche, to then all of a sudden you're like, man.

Why did I just flip out on that person? I have no clue why I did that. And it's because you ignored this and that and this, and you didn't take the time to unpack this idea. And so there's an interesting part of this, right? When we think about the word anger, we have to realize that we're talking about a wide variety.

of things here. Anger can equal anything from like surrender to rage to like attack. And most of the time what has happened for me is um I will do one of the polar ends of the spectrum. I'll either be like but I give up and I just can't even do it anymore. Like I'm done. I'm gonna walk away. And then usually I like just ignore it. I ignore it. The other part of this and it's

It's literally been a large part of my life is attack mode. I'm going to attack. I'm going to get back. I'm going to, you're causing me internal pain. I'm going to cause you internal pain as well. And, and I don't think that in the moment, but I know now that's what is happening when this, when this goes on. And so.

How do you not get to that point? And how do you understand what version of anger you're actually dealing with? That's where we kind of have to get people into. And in a lot of this, when I say ignore it, right, or tell the story, what we're forgetting to do, and for me, this is a phrase that I use and want to use more as I move forward, as I work through this, is this idea of keep it.

George B. Thomas (22:08.327)
or release it. Now, when you think about keeping it, it's because we're going down this journey of I'm going to keep it because it's going to be the fuel that fuels me to do something in the future. Or you realize it's release it because it has no good. It's only going to turn toxic. You have to like unpack it, get it out, get it gone and move forward in life so that you don't become and here's it's funny now.

But not funny. Listen, if I ask my kids, because, and again, this is the perfect episode for this story. If I ask my kids how many dads they had, they'd probably say they have two dads. Now, actually, they might say they have three dads after this weekend, who knows? But before, it used to be this running joke of they had grizzly bear dad and they had zen dad. And grizzly bear dad came out this weekend.

And I don't like Grizzly Bear Dad. But Grizzly Bear Dad was like the pre me trying to become who I am. The pre trying to live a life beyond your default. The pre unpacking. It just keep it, keep it in. Just keep it in. We can handle it. Man up. Just bring, bring it on world. I don't, I don't need to talk to nobody. And it was just this.

Again, cauldron of toxic anger just bubbling underneath the surface.

Liz Moorehead (23:45.402)
Anger is such a funny emotion for me because when I think about the times that I've let anger rule my life, anger always felt like this energetic reserve, this reservoir of emotion that just keeps filling and filling and filling and filling. And often when it would come out and manifest itself the loudest, it was the tiniest trigger. It was an outsized reaction.

to something very small and minute. And there's that, you were talking about keep it or release it, you know, that's why it's so important not only to, if we have that type of anger in our lives, it's not just about releasing it, it's about understanding why it's there. Because often I would find that there would be situations where I would say, well, I'm angry at X or Y or Z, when in reality, anger was masking a shame.

A guilt. Something that actually had to do with myself that I actually had not dealt with yet. For example, um, I'm angry that so-and-so rejected me. I'm actually ashamed because I'm worried that I'm not lovable enough, you know, or I'm not good enough, or it's just validating that I am never going to be good enough, you know, things like that. There's a, it's a weird thing that can happen where if you're not careful...

George B. Thomas (25:05.475)
Mmm.

Liz Moorehead (25:12.098)
Anger can just explode out of nowhere if you have not dealt with the things in your life that you need to deal with. Because anger is a very interesting emotion in that one of the reasons why, at least for me, it has felt like a runaway train in the past is because you feel it very physically. Like you suddenly will have this.

rush of anger and this feeling and emotion and adrenaline, and it has to go somewhere. It has to translate into action, which makes it very, very tricky to deal with.

George B. Thomas (25:48.243)
Yeah, it's interesting because for me, and probably for most humans, because I mean, I'm pretty dang normal, face will turn red, back of the head will get tight, you know, shoulders will clamp up and you just, you just feel like you're about to explode, right? And it's funny because when we were getting ready for this episode, I kept thinking of

Liz Moorehead (26:04.702)
My mouth gets really small. Yeah.

George B. Thomas (26:17.031)
And it's not a crock pot, but like my grandma had one on the stove. And you know, it would, she would use it for canning, by the way. But it would let the steam out, right? Pressure cooker. Yes. And I started to think, man, how cool would it be if I could just become a pressure cooker where my, my mind, my body would only, uh, take the pressure that needed. And then there'd be this cool way to just be like,

Liz Moorehead (26:27.372)
pressure cooker.

George B. Thomas (26:47.608)
And it like and just the excess that I don't need would be gone. And I was like, oh, man, this idea of like, just how do you do that with your with your mind? How do you do that with your responses? And and again, I like visuals, right? So moving forward, I want to start to think about this in the moment. Pressure cooker.

uh, idea. And here's the thing. We've been dancing around this a little bit, Liz, but I want to go ahead and talk about this idea of, because I mentioned it earlier, this idea of rage, but I want to mention it around rage and response or response and rage is how I'm going to actually talk about this. Like, there's this idea of anger and it being a response in the moment based on bad, right? Um, I am

angry that somebody is stealing my car. Hey, that's not bad anger. Like there, so there's good and healthy anger out of response. Somebody just punched me in the face. I'm a little bit angry. I'm about to hawk out and tear some stuff up. Not bad anger, right? Like you're somebody's literally physically coming at you.

It's a self-defense mechanism, however, then it's not, right? The difference between that response and it being good or healthy anger is this idea of rage. And that's what I've been talking about through most of the beginning of this episode, is this bubbling up from the past moments based on nothing. That person didn't do jack squat and all of a sudden they've got like this, like in, like in...

the dinosaur movie, right? Jurassic Park, Ross said it's like this just spitting dinosaur like all over the guy. And that's like, they got this toxic crap, your dinosaur crap all over you, all over them. And it's like, that's unhealthy. That's just unhealthy.

George B. Thomas (28:47.307)
What's interesting as we're researching this, I started to dive into this area of trauma and you've mentioned trauma on different podcasts, I suppose, but I started mentioning trauma or understanding or looking into trauma versus anger. Um, and trauma interacts in the present based on the past. So when you think about this rage, you have to be like, man, am I angry?

Or have I just not dealt with some historical trauma? This was a freaking eye opener for me because I was like, I've had a pretty decent life. Nothing real traumatic.

And then I had to be like, wow, have I been selling myself a bag of bullshit for like 50 years? Like, did I actually have some traumatic moments, but I decided to like ignore them? Did I try to erase them off the whiteboard of life? Like, what do I need to dive back into?

to actually realize why this keeps happening or why it kept happening and why I have these smaller incidences even with these tools that I've come along the way.

So like, it's just like if you're sitting here listening to this, you have to be like, why am I always first of all, if you're like, especially guys, gals, if you're like, why am I always angry? Go get your blood pressure checked out and see if you actually need to be on blood pressure medicine. Anyway, totally different story, different podcast episode. Liz, you can remember to bring that up at a future time. But second of all, ask yourself. Man, what traumatic ish?

George B. Thomas (30:32.663)
Did I go through that I have refused to unpack and actually work through? I'll stop there. Um, Liz, what are your thoughts?

Liz Moorehead (30:42.55)
I mean, the thing that's coming to mind immediately is that, you know, and I'm aware I'm the woman saying this on the podcast, but like think about how men are trained from birth not to emote. And I think it's tragic. I was talking with a friend of mine last week about it, about how you can't have a feeling. You know, like I think it's kind of like a double edged sword. Have a feeling, men, you know, cry, talk to us about things. But to be...

George B. Thomas (30:54.656)
Yo.

Liz Moorehead (31:11.214)
quite frank, often it's rejected. There is a serious challenge and an uphill battle for men in general to emote anything beyond what is considered stereotypically male. And that.

George B. Thomas (31:26.563)
When you go out of that, Liz, I'm so glad you brought that up. Because, by the way, I said on a previous podcast episode, if there's one thing I could get back, it would be my emotions. I'd want to get those back. I'm so mad that I subscribe to the walk it off man up stuff through my life. And it's so interesting because, Liz, this idea that you're that you're kind of leaning into.

Liz Moorehead (31:42.666)
I remember that, yep.

George B. Thomas (31:57.203)
Listen, it doesn't matter who you are in my life. The minute that I move from being what the world has told me to be as a man to anything outside of that, I immediately am worried about being judged. No matter who you are, I don't care who you are, how close you think you are to me. There has been a moment in time where I've wanted to share something with you and I have stopped myself in fear of being judged.

of being something other than what the world says we are to be as men.

Anyway, that's probably a whole freaking episode in itself.

Liz Moorehead (32:35.658)
We need to have a conversation about that. So let's speak more broadly, though. Why is understanding our relationship with anger critical to living a life beyond your default? What does this type of anger potentially rob you of? Because we're talking a lot about the consequences in the moment, like, ooh, maybe I upset my family. Ooh, maybe I went off a little too much on that person or something or other. But let's talk bigger picture.

George B. Thomas (32:59.731)
Yeah. So listen, the world has already put a challenge course in front of you, right? Like there are things that you're going to have to climb, hoops that you're going to have to go through, you know, escape rooms that you've got to figure out. Life has already set that up. If you go through.

life without figuring out that trauma, without figuring out the anger, without understanding how to use it for good and bad. And by the way, Liz, before we end this podcast, I definitely want to dive into a like, well, how do you do that? What are the things that you can stop or a framework that you can put in place when like this happens? But back to the analogy, life has already given you a course that you have to go through.

Why we would decide to make it more difficult on ourselves, I don't understand. But when we don't deal with anger, when anger isn't a positive fuel, but it's a negative force in our life, it's like we're setting extra landmines and hand grenades off around the path that we have to take. Imagine how stupid that is. I just need to jump over this river. But while I'm jumping, let me throw a grenade in the air right next to my head.

and see if it helps me jump over this river just a little bit better. It's not going to help you jump over the river. It's not going to help with anything that you're doing. Like this negative toxicity anger, landmines and hand grenades are only going to shell shock the shit out of you and put you back paces instead of putting you forward towards where you're actually trying to go. So this is why it's so important. The other thing is that

hand grenades and landmines are left laying around in the past, the path that you've gone back through. Guess who's back there? Your wife, your kids, your husband, your family, your friends. And so all sudden these hand grenades and landmines that all sudden are going to go off are impacting the people around you.

George B. Thomas (35:19.111)
Now, we've already talked about how important the relationships that we curate for the climb that we're about to take are. So why would we let our anger affect us and affect the relationships of those that we want around us when we're on this journey beyond your default? Like, it makes no sense. Yet we do it every day because we don't take time to think about it and we don't take time to figure out how can we fix it.

Liz Moorehead (35:48.47)
Well, let's go ahead and take a little detour here. Talk to us about what that framework is that you were alluding to.

George B. Thomas (35:54.663)
Yeah, so I'm going to there's a framework and then there's a couple of strategies that you might use. And by the way, I'm not making anything new here. This these are things that I have found. And I'm like, oh, I like that. I think other people like that. There are somebody that will listen to this podcast will enjoy these things. So it's not a big mystery or it's not a bit like unknown thing that I like.

when I can make letters, words, mean other things. I'm just naturally, I'm naturally attracted to the acronym. I would date the acronym like, well, I'm married, so I can't date the acronym, but I love acronyms. So this one, for me, there's a couple reasons why I love it. First of all, the acronym is RAIN, okay?

Liz Moorehead (36:30.206)
You're a big fan of the good old acronym.

Liz Moorehead (36:43.422)
Thank you.

George B. Thomas (36:50.699)
The reason I love this is because hopefully there's been a rainstorm once in your life and you've just stepped out and you've let it rain on you. And you felt the idea of it just being refreshing, especially on a hot day of the cleansing manner of it. The the idea of that it's just this like, just.

amazing manna from heaven that just open your mouth and the raindrops are going in your mouth and you're like, this is amazing. Refreshing, cleansing, cleaning, right? Rain. So when we're dealing with anger, what this acronym is for is the first thing is when it starts to happen.

When your mouth starts to get a little small, the back of your head starts to get a little tense, you start to breathe a little bit different, you feel your face getting a little bit flush, freaking recognize it. Recognize that that's happening. Also, if you just blew up on somebody, oh snap, that just happened, recognize it. Don't just like ignore it like I talked about earlier, don't just wipe it off the whiteboard of life, like recognize it.

this is about to happen or that just happened. One of those two. Then you kind of have to allow it. And what I don't mean when I say allow it is like, okay, I feel it coming on. You're a stinky bat. Like, no, that's not what I'm saying. But you have to like, there's this thing that we do. We fight it or we accept it.

And what I mean by fighting or accepting is the feelings. And Liz, you bumped into this earlier in the episode. It's usually a layer or two below what we think it is. But we fight those feelings. We push them back, push them down. Instead of accepting, like I said, did I have a traumatic life? Push down, fight, like not accepting.

George B. Thomas (38:52.787)
not allowing those moments, those emotions, those hard things to actually be there in the moment. But if we recognize it, holy crap, I just felt that way. Oh my gosh, it's because of this thing, because you allowed it in. Now you can investigate it.

And this is where it gets real interesting. And I'll talk about some questions that you might ask when you're in this investigation part. But this is where we're battling our perception.

of what just happened or what will happen or running scenarios of how we could handle it in our brain. But we recognize it. We allow those deeper feelings. We investigate it. And then over time, we nurture it. Right. And when I say nurture, I want your mind to go to a mother with a newborn baby or whatever version of nurture that you can think is the most pure in your mind of like you're coddling it and creating it.

and making it the best that it can be moving forward. By the way, in this case, you're actually nurturing yourself, mentally nurturing yourself. So this idea of rain, refreshing, cleansing, recognize it, allow it, investigate it, and nurture it. This is a process that we can, and it's gonna look different for everybody. Like you can take those words and do with them what you want, but that's a process that you can put what's gonna happen in life, because it's not if it's when.

and make it so you have something to go with when you get in those moments.

Liz Moorehead (40:30.87)
I love that acronym so much, especially the investigate part, because one of the things that I like to practice personally, well, two things. Number one, I noticed through a different relationship in my life that someone had a tendency to express anger with me when they were struggling to sit with an uncomfortable emotion. Basically, it was the equivalent of, this doesn't feel good. It's your problem now.

And so one of the things that I've tried to do is I try to force myself actually to sit with just being uncomfortable. Sit, you know, whether that's through meditation or just sit in the effing corner for a minute and chill out before you do anything or before you say anything. But then the other piece of it too through that investigation is what am I actually feeling? So one of my favorite little games to play in that moment is I'm not allowed to say I'm angry.

what are three different words I can say for what I'm feeling right now? And I force myself to actually name the feelings that I'm actually having. Because again, we were talking about this earlier and I mentioned this earlier. Anger is this big wave of energy and that can either be stored up over time or it can just rush on you like a tsunami. But you often have to peel back those layers to understand what is actually there.

Sometimes it's not anger at all. It's unfathomable sadness or grief or shame or all of these things. Like I'm not angry, I'm hurt that I was left out. I'm not angry, I feel disrespected. I'm not angry, I'm X, Y, Z.

George B. Thomas (42:16.919)
Yeah, it's interesting because many of us will just be like, well, why did you yell at me? Because I'm angry. That's where we stop. Liz, you are bouncing all around where my brain was going. I would beg the listeners moving forward the next time you hear yourself say, that made me angry or I'm angry at you, to simply follow it up with this. Because I feel...

X.

Dishonored, unloved. Because as I'm actually thinking about this, I feel like anger is an emotion. It is the thing, the icing to the emotion that you're actually feeling. I know that's not truth in the world that we live in, but like if I can visualize it a certain way, anger is only the covering of the thing that made you get that way. And again, listeners, I'm angry at you.

Because I feel X or this makes me angry because I think or I feel whatever it is. It's interesting, Liz, because can we dive into that investigation piece for a second? So.

Liz Moorehead (43:34.07)
Yeah, let's do it.

George B. Thomas (43:37.875)
there's this interesting thing that happened in my life and usually interesting things that happened in my life they're either like something I went through or something I read and um so again bringing back a story that if you're a lifelong listener of what episode one through 18 because we're on episode 19 I think

Liz Moorehead (44:02.518)
Yep, 19.

George B. Thomas (44:02.955)
You would have heard the story of Arden and he's like, are you looking for the perfect church? And he said if you find it don't go there because you'll ruin it because you're human. There was a scripture that came along with that story that I didn't share in the original.

story. And it was this, it was the scripture of Matthew 7, 3 through 5. And the scripture goes, why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye but you do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, let me take the speck out of your eye while the log is in your eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the

George B. Thomas (44:47.065)
I'm a very visual person. I love these stories, analogies, acronyms, things that you can wrap your brain around visually to understand. And for me, what this meant is in that investigation phase of what we talked about, that I had to take my million dollar high powered microscope lens that I had off the other human.

and simply turn it 180 degrees right onto myself. So when I talk about investigating, it's things like, who am I? Who am I right now? That this is what's happening in my brain. This is the way that I feel inside my body. Who the heck have I become to allow this in this moment?

Who do I actually want to show up as? Because this, by the way, shows me the canyon of like, in this minute, I have become this person and this is how I want to show up as and I have some work to do. What part did I have to play in what just went down? Was it 10% me, 100% me? What lessons can I learn from what just happened?

Because if I ignore history, I am doomed to repeat it.

Listen, every time you've got angry at somebody or something, that is historical data. It's the marketer in me coming out for a second. That's the historical data that you could be using to fix potential future problems and give a better user experience to those around you in life. And then I want to ask myself in this investigation, who do I want to be? Right. So who am I?

George B. Thomas (46:42.399)
Who have I become? How do I wanna show up? What part did I play? What lessons can I learn? And who do I wanna be moving forward from this moment in time? You start to ask those questions in that alignment of, you made me angry because I feel. And you're investigating the second or third layer, the real reason. Now you're gonna start to get to some places in life.

Liz Moorehead (47:11.918)
You know me, I always have to play devil's advocate, so are you ready for it?

George B. Thomas (47:15.632)
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Liz Moorehead (47:18.45)
Is there ever a case for anger for you? Is there ever a situation where you feel anger in its purest form is a valuable feeling that needs to be honored?

George B. Thomas (47:21.583)
Oh yeah.

George B. Thomas (47:28.231)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. So here's what's fun. You want a fun Google search? Because by the way, again, I try to try to make this podcast that anybody can listen to. But I also need people to just understand that I fundamentally believe in God.

I'm a spiritual human being. I have faith. It's like one of the core tenets that eventually we'll talk about faith, but I need you to have like 20, 25 episodes of other stuff to be able to listen to before we need to probably have that conversation around faith and the importance of it. But here's the thing, if you want a fun Google search, and again, not dependent upon what you believe, but if you look at the Christian faith,

They, and you will probably find this in other religions by the way, they believe that Jesus was sinless. But here's a fun Google search. Search the five times that Jesus got angry. It's in there.

It's in there, right? So like John 2, 15 through 17. So he made a whip of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned the tables. Sounds like somebody kind of pissed if he's turning over tables. To those who sold doves, he said, get these out of here, right? So yeah, there is, Liz, times where anger is actually what is needed.

It is the thing that could be the activating point. My only worry about myself, not others, is that is a very interesting sword to yield. And I would say that you would have to be a master of that craft before I would feel secure in using it in the way.

George B. Thomas (49:23.671)
that it can be used for positive. Now, I kind of jokingly at the beginning of this said, if somebody punched me in the face, I'm gonna use anger for good. And listen, I didn't start it, but ladies and gentlemen, like daddy always said, like daddy said, you didn't start it.

Liz Moorehead (49:37.134)
start the fire, but...

George B. Thomas (49:41.863)
But it's okay to finish it, right? Like there are times where it's a positive force. Listen, my anger for my math teacher became a positive force because it turned me into it was the fuel when turned from toxicity to pure ethanol turned me into who I am. Like this educator mindset, you know, HubSpot zero to HubSpot hero. Even today, like the Beyond Your Default podcast may have never happened.

The book may have never happened if my math teacher didn't tell me I'd never mount anything. Like the anger that I got from being from divorced parents was the fuel for me to like be consistent and like stay staying power.

in relationships many times, no matter what, and no matter what mentality. But again, that was just like taking a toxic anger and turning into positive ethanol for a methodology, best practice or principle that I wanted to live life by. And so that's the thing.

I think that we can take this, and I said it a couple of times, I think we can take this cauldron of toxicity that sits in us because we ignore it, we don't unpack it, and we can put it through the refinery. And we can, when we refine that toxic blah, blah in there, all of a sudden it can come out in positive energy that we use for the things that we need to do and the places that we need to go in life. Again.

Liz Moorehead (51:15.746)
No, I love that because anger in its purest form is not a time to take action. Anger to me is a signal of something. And until you go through that processing, and you have to be very careful too because I don't know if you've ever had this, but like, man, when I get angry sometimes, I will become the most self-righteous little gremlin on the planet and it's so hard to put.

George B. Thomas (51:41.548)
Hmm.

Liz Moorehead (51:44.694)
to throw the emergency brakes on that runaway train. Because in that moment, when that adrenaline's pumping, you're like, I don't need to do rain. I don't need to investigate ish. I know exactly what happened. That guy sucked. This girl did this thing to me. This made me feel, and I'm gonna let them know. And it's so hard to pull that emergency brake on that, but it's so critical. Anger is not the feeling or the thing.

George B. Thomas (51:48.247)
Mmm.

George B. Thomas (51:57.591)
Ha ha ha.

George B. Thomas (52:09.623)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (52:13.634)
that should immediately precipitate an action. It has to be processed first.

George B. Thomas (52:19.115)
Yeah, that's why that's why from the time you were a kid, people were like, count to 10. If you get angry, count to 10. Right. And that's the thing. There are all sorts of strategies that you can do, because I agree with you, Liz. It's not like a the impact or effect of anger should not be a knee jerk response. And therefore, if there's one thing that you do as a listener. Is devise a plan.

Liz Moorehead (52:26.04)
hate camp.

George B. Thomas (52:46.079)
When I get angry, when I feel anger coming upon me, I'm going to walk away. I'm gonna count to 10. I'm gonna, like, plan for that knee-jerk response and something that you know that you're gonna do.

and run that scenario through your brain. And again, it comes down to simple strategies that you like, listen, you can start to breathe deeply from your diaphragm, breathing from the chest won't relax you, right? But like, we're talking deep, you know, breaths. Like there's a, again, there's this show called Limitless. If you haven't watched it, it's super dope. It's Thor, the guy, you know, Chris Hemsworth that plays Thor.

Liz Moorehead (53:24.686)
Chris Hemsworth, yep.

George B. Thomas (53:26.675)
He's amazing, but limitless there's one where they're talking about breathing and it talks about this like deep from the diaphragm Breathing and how it actually like slows your heart rate down I'll give you a little tidbit of information every time I'm at the doctor and they're gonna take my blood pressure

I've already done breathing techniques before I even walk into the office to like get my heart rate down so that my blood pressure is actually like at a decent level. My blood pressure medicine and breathing techniques. And they're always like, oh, your blood pressure is great. And I'm like, thanks. Anyway, not why we're here. But you have to breathe from this diaphragm, this lower right in it, from your gut, deep breaths. And it'll literally like just, hey, I'm going to do that because it's going to slow my heart rate. It's going to give me time to think.

You could come up with a phrase, right? I don't know what your phrase is. Right, banana, whatever. But like, take it easy, take it relax, George. And this is one of those times where I have found it's super powerful to use your name.

Liz Moorehead (54:15.938)
I have an emotional safe word, banana. Yeah.

George B. Thomas (54:30.255)
Use your name. Talk to yourself in this. Relax, George. George B. Thomas, it'll be OK. Relax. Relax, George. Like whatever it is, but repeat it to yourself. And again, it almost creates or if you can create a breathing with that like response.

Use imagery, right? Visualization, relaxing experience. I love the movie Happy Gilmore. He goes to his happy place, right? When I think about this, like if you're about to get angry, like, where's your happy place? Where is that? Is it on a ship in the middle of the ocean, you know, eating ice cream? 24 seven pizza. Like, where's your happy place? Because if you can take yourself there.

then this is going to help with what you're feeling in the moment, the anger that's bubbling up. Or you could do some type of like slow movement or exercise. I'm not a big yoga person, but like, I was like, man, depending on how weird this would look, if I could get away from the scenario and do like some Tai Chi or something, right? Where again, because now you're thinking about the motions of your body, you're thinking, you're taking your mind a little bit off.

Liz Moorehead (55:40.182)
I just go for a walk. It doesn't even have to be that fancy. Just like go, burn some of that energy off, give it somewhere to go.

George B. Thomas (55:42.037)
Go for a walk. Yeah.

George B. Thomas (55:48.491)
That's it. That is burning the energy off, whether in a physical form or a mental form. The pressure cooker, right? We're literally talking about how do you create the pressure cooker moment in your life so that you let off the steam that doesn't become toxicity.

Liz Moorehead (56:15.362)
So let's say someone is listening right now and they may have been nodding along with us, they may have related to a lot of what we've talked about today, but they still feel a bit like they're being held captive by their own anger, that they struggle to move through it when they know they need to move through it. What is one challenge you wanna leave them with today from this episode?

George B. Thomas (56:40.787)
Yeah, I like the setup there. Listen, I'll go back first before I go forward. At the beginning of this, right, I put a Mark Twain quote out there and I said, anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. If you feel stuck in that.

First of all, you got to ask yourself, why would you do that? Like, why would you leave that toxicity stored up in you to do more harm? But the challenge that I would give the listeners is I would beg the listeners, and I mean beg in the truest, all capitals, three exclamation marks that I can say it. I would beg them to stop. And ponder this last thought.

And again, I would date the acronyms, but I will take quotes out for lunch every day of the week, I get a chance. And so Albert Einstein has this what I would call a stop and think moment. And that is, Anchor Dwells Only in the Boozom of Fools.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools. Listen, don't live your life as a fool. Don't be considered a fool. Don't even try to dance in the realm of, you know, being foolish, because fools rarely make it to a life beyond their default. And if you're listening to this podcast, I truly believe that you

are destined for greatness, that you have what it takes, that you can take everything that we talked about today, understand all the connection points that anger has with forgiveness and relationships and...

George B. Thomas (58:45.515)
and that you can take this anger and you can turn it into energy for the climb, for the grind, that you're heading for the mountaintop, that you're heading for a life of significance. Let it be your fuel.

Don't make it that you're a fool.