Know your hot buttons. What makes you feel angry, defensive, fearful, or guilty? These are your stressors. What are the long-term effects of feeling stressed or fearful? (Examples: Fatigue, high blood pressure, heart disease, insomnia, absenteeism.) Life isn’t fun any longer.

As long as there are negative emotions, what will happen to the conflict situation?

During our preparation, we should have already dealt with our own emotions. To overcome our fear, we will face it and just keep going in spite of it. To overcome our anger, we have to recognize it isn’t going to get us what we want.

Can you think of a time when you responded to a sales clerk or waiter or gas pump attendant with anger and got even worse service than you were originally complaining about?