Little Coach Vaughn: Counting to Three

Don't let that innocent smile fool you. I could be an angry little kid. I’d throw tantrums and tackle my friends if I got mad. At one point (sometime around the third or fourth grade) I decided this behavior wasn’t something I wanted to continue. It was a conscious decision I remember making. I wanted to be calm, easy going, and...nice. To get my temper under control, I started counting to three. It worked, and here’s why I think it did.

Before counting to three, I not only had to recognize that I was losing my temper, but I also had to remember I had a goal to be more composed. Recognition is the first step in controlling a behavior. Without it you’ll find yourself making the same mistakes over and over again. Remembering your goal is the second step. It provides you with the choice, “do I give in to my normal behavior or do I work towards my goal?” Without that choice, you will do what you have always done, even if you will regret it later.

Counting to three gave me time to consider consequences. I remember one time being very angry with my friend Garrett. We were eating lunch at school and he started making fun of me for being mistaken about the glow in the dark properties of caterpillar blood (I don’t know what I was thinking). As I counted to myself, I considered my options. I could get angry and make fun of Garrett’s rat tail or MC Hammer parachute pants (which I thought were awesome) or I could laugh it off and continue with lunch. I knew getting angry and making fun of him would only result in a comeback that would make me even angrier. I chose to laugh it off and I never regretted it.

Counting to three also gave me time to put myself in the other person’s shoes. I realized that most of the time I lost my temper due to an accident or misunderstanding. Considering the feelings of my friend went a long way in calming me down.

My friends noticed the change. One time Garrett accidentally kicked me in the face while we were playing wrestling on the trampoline. The look on Garrett’s face was 50% worry about me and 50% worry about what I was going to do to him. When my only response was, “I’m okay. I know you didn’t mean to”, the look on his face changed to 20% relief and 80% utter surprise.

This decision I made in elementary school stuck with me until college when biochemistry exams unleashed my anger once again. Now I need to start counting to three again as I reprogram my behavior to one of patience and understanding.