Be the Last to Raise Your Voice
For me this is a really hard one. I do love to have a good
shout. I came from a big, robust family where shouting was a
way of life and the only way to get yourself heard, get any
attention, or make a point. Dysfunctional? Yes. Noisy? Yes.
Helpful? Probably not.
One of my sons has inherited the shouting gene, and he is
very good at it. The temptation is to join in. Luckily, this Rule
is be the last to raise your voice, so I do have a get-out clause.
If he shouts first, I’m allowed to shout back. But I do try really
hard not to. For me, shouting in any form is a bad thing, a
sign that I have lost control, lost the argument. The son of a
vicar once saw his father’s sermon notes and in the margin he
had pencilled, “Shout here, argument weak.” I think this just
about sums it all up.
But I have shouted at various times and, invariably, I regret
each and every occasion. I know I’ve regretted the time I was
very shouty in a well-known high street electrical chain over a
damaged video player. At that time I did get my own way, but
the reality is that it was a bad thing and deep down I’m quite
ashamed of myself.
So what do you do if you, too, have inherited the shouty gene
like I have? I find that I have to walk away to stop the
inevitable decline into shouting in a challenging situation.
That’s a tough one, especially if you know you’re right. There
are so many things that make us shout, so many situations
where we feel that a judicious loss of temper will get us our
own way. But we are dealing with real live human beings who
have their own feelings, and shouting is not justified—even if
they start it first.