Who among us has not written an angry email?
Whether we’re letting an ex know how they’ve done us wrong or complaining to the dry cleaner about ruining our favorite shirt, most of us have found ourselves rushing to our keyboards at one time or another to give someone a piece of our minds.
But firing off a strongly worded screed isn’t always the best course of action, and there’s one thing you should ask yourself before you hit “send.”
“Think about the intent. Why are you sending it? What’s the goal?” Ryan Martin, better know as the Anger Professor, recently told us — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the co-hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast.
“If the goal is literally just to tell someone how angry you are or to make them feel bad in some way, think about whether or not that’s going to get you where you want to go in the long run.”
Once you know what your intent is, you should make sure that everything you’re writing is framed around this goal, according to Martin, a psychology professor and an associate dean for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
“A lot of times, making [the email recipient] angry as part of that angry email is probably not going to help you get to that goal,” he said.
He also advised giving yourself a little time to decide if you want to send your draft … to the trash.
“One of the best parts about email versus an in-person interaction is that you’ve got time,” said Martin, the author of “How To Deal With Angry People” and “Why We Get Mad: How To Use Your Anger for Positive Change.”
“So you can give yourself 10 minutes to sort of let yourself cool down, and then reread it and decide if you want to send it still,” he said. “You can also ask a friend to read it and say: ‘Hey, will you take a look at this? Tell me how you’d react to it.’”
You also want to think about everything that you’re including in the email ― not just the words.
“Think about the nonwords elements — the use of emojis, the use of all-caps,” Martin told us. “Do those things help you make your point? Do they actually hurt your point? Think about that, again, in the context of the broader goal of why you’re sending this.”
Finally, ask yourself if the message should be sent via email in the first place.
“Don’t be afraid to take it offline,” Martin said. “It might be better to just have the conversation than to have the back-and-forth over email.”
We also discussed the two words you should never say to an angry person, why exercise and “rage rooms” might not actually help alleviate your anger, and much more.
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