You casually greet a collegue or acquaintance with “Hi,how’s it going?”,   The snappy come back in a snarly tone “What’s it to you?” leads to one of those “where did that come from ” moments.

It’s impossible to answer that question without cllimbing into the mind of the other person and checking out the baggage they are carrying around. And even at that you cannot be sure of the trigger.

What’s the Cause?

I heard a great analogy at a seminar I attended years ago that explains one possible root cause of this type of behaviour.   Understanding the cause might not hep you avoid these sudden outbursts from others, but it can help you manage yourself.

As we move through our day from waking up until we go to sleep each encounter we have with others either we recieve a bag and a stamp or we pass a bag and stamp or both pass and recieve a bag and stamp.

The bags represent the content of the exchange and we may keep our bags or pass them on as we wend through our day.  In this analogy the stamps are the emotions passed with the bag.  These we keep through the day and they build up.

An example may be colleague passing you a folder full of tasks for you to do with a statement requesting the actions be completed by the end of the day.  The folder is the baggage and the comment is the stamp.

The emotions you associate with the stamp could be anger, frustration, fear or excitement about the tasks and so on. It all depends on your circumstances and how you view the situation.

Good stamps and Bad Stamps

Obviously as you move through your day you will collect good stamps and bad stamps.  If you cannot drop the bad stamps, or maybe slip them to someone else,they build up.

When the tipping point is recieved it would not be unusual for you to snarl a sudden outburst.  That is where it comes from.  You are releasing the bad stamps on someone else.

The Solution

Avoid getting more bad stamps then you can handle during the day and make sure you get a good nights sleep in order to purge what you do have.

This purging ensures you have a clean slate for collecting bad stamps the next day and thus can keep the daily accumulation at livable levels.  Explosions avoided.

If you can’t avoid collecting a bunch of negative emotions, before you get to the tipping point,  find other ways to purge  like forcing some happy thoughts into your mind or just getting away and meditating in peace.