Why Anger Only Lasts 90 Seconds (And What to Do)

When anger hits you like a freight train, you have about 90 seconds for your brain to decide what to do: de-escalate or escalate. Most people get this wrong. This video will show you what high-performing leaders do instead. Someone just exploded at you in a meeting and you're taken totally by surprise. Your heart rate spikes, adrenaline surges through your body, cortisol is starting to ramp up. You are in total threat mode, fight or flight. What do you do? What you do in the next 90 seconds will determine whether or not this confrontation turns into resolution or war. The counterintuitive truth is high-performing leaders don't just stay calm. They do something very, very different. And neuroscience explains why. I'm going to give you the exact protocol I gave to people serving life sentences without possibility of parole for the 10 years that I was working in maximum security prisons. Training murderers to be peacemakers. If it works there, it will work in your boardroom. So first of all, let's understand the neuroscience that nobody ever taught you. When someone becomes angry, their prefrontal cortex goes offline. They literally get hijacked and they can no longer think because every resource in the body is being mobilized to either freeze, flee, run away, or fight. When you're confronted with an angry person, you're not talking to anybody that's rational. Don't even try. In fact, that's the mistake that most people make, is they're assuming that rationality, reasoning, explanation, justification will somehow reach that hijacked brain and bring calm to the room. It absolutely will not. In fact, what it will do is make things worse. Here's the thing: Jill Bolten Taylor, a neuroscientist, determined through experimentation that the biochemistry of an emotion lasts for about 90 seconds. What you do after that is really up to you. It's choice or it's programming. The mistake that most people make, they try to argue, out-yell, out-shout, rationalize, justify, excuse, explain, show the evidence, fight to be right. We've all seen it and it never works. The one thing that actually does work is a skill called affect labeling, A-F-F-E-C-T labeling. Basically, you name the emotions with a you statement. You're frustrated, you're angry, you feel disrespected, you feel abandoned. Brain scanning studies show that when you engage in affect labeling, you reduce the amygdala activity by more than 60%. And at the same time, you activate a part of the brain that's responsible for emotional self-regulation, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In plain English, naming emotions with a you statement calms people down. They can't help themselves. It's automatic and it's hardwired into every single human brain. So here's the process. Step number 1, read the emotion. It's really easy to do, especially with anger. The only emotions you have to remember are anger, frustration, maybe disrespect, not being heard, unappreciated, unsupported, worried, and concerned. So you would say, "You're really angry. You're really frustrated. You feel completely disrespected. You feel unappreciated and unsupported, and you're worried and concerned." After you've named the emotions, pause for 2 heartbeats and watch the reaction. If they keep talking and there's still a lot of emotion, Name the emotions as they come up again and keep repeating this process until you see a relaxation response, usually in about 90 seconds. A dropping of the shoulders, a sigh of relief, a nodding of the head, and sometimes some verbal response like, "Yeah!" or "Exactly!" When you see the relaxation response, you're finished, so stop. The one thing you don't want to do is to go back to that old active listening stuff that doesn't work. So you don't want to use "I" statements. You don't want to say something like, "Wow, it seems to me that you're really frustrated." The reason why neurological level is that's too much for the overloaded brain to process. That's why the you statement works. It's much simpler and easier for the brain to process a you statement than a, "What I think you're feeling is X, Y, whatever." So don't use an I statement. Simply use a you statement. You are angry. In fact, see how these two land. If I say to you, "I sense that you're really angry," as compared to, "You are 'Angry.' What's the difference between those two statements in terms of the way they land with you? That's the difference. A lot of people worry about whether or not they're going to be right. And it doesn't matter whether you're right or not. You can be wrong. You'll see this happen a lot. 'You're really angry.' 'No, I'm not. I'm frustrated.' 'Oh, you're really frustrated.' 'Yes.' 'You're really worried and concerned.' 'Yeah.' 'And you feel a little embarrassed and shame.' 'Yeah.' 'And you're offended by what's going on.' 'Yeah.' 'And it really pisses you off.' 'Yeah.' So you weren't wrong. The person pushed back against you only because the angry person couldn't process that anger yet. They needed more time, and your affect labeling helped them process the emotion. So you're never wrong. And the other thing that's really strange about this is even if you are wrong, the speaker doesn't care. All the speaker cares about is that you're trying to hear them. And so they will never get upset with you. And I know that's contrary to conventional wisdom, but that is the experience. And until you actually try it yourself, you'll never really see it. But when you see it, you'll see what happens. And you'll see why there's truth to what I say. Another thing you want to avoid is reflecting defensively. So you might say something like, "You're really angry, but..." You know better than to use the word "but." The moment you say "but," everything in front of the "but" goes away. So no "buts." You also don't want to try to do fake empathy, like, "I know exactly how you feel," or, "I've been there myself," or, "Boy, if I were in your position, I'd feel exactly the same way." None of that works because it's all about you. Again, make the statement direct from the reference point of the speaker, the speaker's frame of reference. You are You're angry. All you have to say. That's all you should say. Nothing more, nothing less. So the protocol in full: read the emotion, name it with a "you" statement, pause. If the person is still upset and keeps talking, name the next set of emotions, pause, give them space to talk. They'll do the next set of emotions. Great. Name the emotions, pause. Don't agree with them, don't disagree, don't defend, don't become defensive. All you're doing is naming their emotions. And it's okay to interrupt. So if they go on and on and on and on, you just stop and say, "Oh, you're really angry and frustrated." They will not be bothered by you interrupting. Because you're not in conversation, you're in listening mode. And the rules in listening are different than the rules in conversation. You will see this for yourself when you begin to practice it. It's weird, but it works. So I'll tell you a quick story. I have so many out of prison. I was working in Corcoran State Prison before the pandemic and working with guys coming out of gangs. And one of the guys in my group was named Mike, and he had a 7-year-old daughter. And every time we go into training, we get— went in once a week and for a day and talked about— we always started our sessions with a check-in, what's going on. And so I said, okay, what's going on? And Mike said, "I got a story to tell." And this is what he told us. He said, "I've got a 7-year-old daughter and she has always been afraid of me for good reason." He's all tatted up and looked pretty vicious. And he's in, he was a gang member. The last time I talked to her, I started listening to her emotions and labeling what I thought she was feeling. And I could hear her relax and start to become engaged with me and started talking even more about what was going on in her life. And after she was done talking, in the next call that I had with my wife, she told me that My little girl wanted to have her own separate phone call with me because she didn't get enough time. And he started to cry a little bit. He said, I've learned more about that little girl from listening to her emotions than I could have possibly imagined. And in the next visit, she didn't hesitate. She came running towards me and jumped into my arms and gave me a big hug. And he started crying again. That's the power of listening to emotions. And, and if it will work with men who are coming out of gangs in maximum security prisons, it's going to work in your boardroom. I guarantee it. So to summarize, the simple technique is to read the emotion, name it, pause, name it, read Pause. Name it. Read it. Pause. Look for the 4 relaxation responses: nodding of the head, dropping of the shoulders, sigh of relief, and some kind of verbal response like "yeah" or "exactly." When you've done that, you've completely defused the situation, and the entire process will take you less than 120 seconds from start to finish. It will work on anybody because every human brain on the planet is hardwired to respond this way. This week, catch yourself when you're in a tense situation. You'll, you'll You'll want to get defensive. You want to argue back. You'll say, "Yeah, but..." Don't! Stop! Read the emotion of the other person and name that emotion. Pause and watch what happens. And then write in the comment section here what happened. Tell us your, your story and let other people know how successful you were. So in my next video, I'm going to show you how to apply this in leadership. And I'm going to show you why most leadership training around listening and empathy gets it completely wrong. Subscribe to the video if you want to learn how to build deep trusting relationships in your life, build deep intimacy, and make connections like you've never had before.