Snapped at a slow driver yesterday in a way the moment did not earn. Some guy riding his brakes for no reason turned me into somebody I don’t love being. That was the heat talking, and me not clocking the heat.
There’s real science here, and it’s been around a while. Craig Anderson at Iowa State has spent decades on what he calls the heat-aggression effect, and the American Psychological Association lays it out plainly: as temperatures climb, so do irritability, hostility, and impulsive reactions. Hotter days, shorter fuses, and they can measure it. Your body reads overheated as under threat, and a threatened animal snaps.
So the reset for a brutal August Tuesday starts below the neck, before it ever reaches your mouth. When you feel the edge coming up, run a quick body check first. Am I hot. Am I hungry. Am I tired. Am I running on fumes. Half the time what feels like a righteous reaction is a dysregulated body looking for somewhere to dump itself. You can use that. Spot the overheated animal and you buy a beat to choose before you act.
Then cool the actual machine. Cold water on the wrists and the back of your neck. A real glass of water instead of the third coffee. You’d be surprised how often the whole “problem” quiets down once your core drops a couple degrees.
Respond instead of react. The gap between what happens and what you do lives in the body first, and in August the body needs more help holding that gap open.
I still blow it sometimes, ask the slow driver. But saying “I’m just hot” to myself before I open my mouth has saved me more dumb moments than any clever mindset trick ever has.
So what’s been setting you off this week that might have more to do with your body than the actual offense?
A few FREE tools if you want them:
Take our FREE Awareness Self Assessment
Get our FREE Focus App (Mobile only)
Get my book, DIAL In Your Leadership, FREE (just pay shipping)
The body check before the reaction is the useful part, most anger advice jumps straight to "count to ten" and skips the step where you actually figure out what's driving the spike. I've noticed the same thing on long summer drives, everyone on the road turns into a worse driver and I always assumed it was just more traffic, not that we're all quietly cooking. Does the cold water on the wrists trick actually work fast enough to catch you mid-snap, or is it more of a preventative thing you do before you're already heated?