It's All in the Voice

A few months ago, my wife was getting ready to leave the house with our daughters, Ella and Sophia. The kids were fighting and generally not cooperating, despite Tanya's repeated requests to get moving.

"Alright, that's it!" Tanya yelled. "Everyone get in the car right now or I'm leaving you at home by yourselves!"

The girls ran into the car without a word but Tanya was still seething. After a few deep breaths, she looked in the rearview mirror and said in her most over-the-top, flowery voice, "OK, ladies, who's going to have a great day today?"

Ella, our 8-year-old, was shocked. "Mom, where did your mean voice go?" she asked.

Tanya didn't know the answer. She needed to do something to keep the rest of the day from becoming a stressful, angry mess so she made an effort to change her attitude. Her rapid reversal worked; Ella was more concerned with Tanya's quick personality switch, the girls stopped fighting and everyone had a good day. This common situation made me wonder: Why is it so hard for us to turn bad situations into good ones?

Stubbed toes. Burned toast. Car won't start. For some reason, when a day starts out bad, it usually gets worse. We brood about what went wrong and recite quotes like, "when it rains it pours" or go on about "Murphy's law." The conscious attitude change that's needed to turn things around isn't easy. But the longer we stay upset, the less likely we are to change it.

We know intuitively that complaining won't help, yet we do it anyway. It seems natural to lament what went wrong. Maybe we're looking for sympathy or someone to tell us it'll all work out or maybe we simply don't know what else to do. But we can create or destroy our own stress.

I've witnessed tantrums from both of my kids. They cry and scream as if the world is about to end and are generally inconsolable. If I were somehow driven to act like that, I'd be traumatized for a week, maybe longer, worried about all the consequences. But for Ella and Sophia, after 15 minutes of blowing off steam, the next chapter begins. They behave as if nothing ever happened and don't carry the stress forward or let it build into something dangerous. I sometimes stand in awe of that gift.

The challenge is figuring out how to move from "mean voice" to "calm voice" and still let our genuine emotions take shape. Perhaps like Tanya did in the car, we should fake it to initiate the change and trust that things will improve. By getting the kids to forget about the stress, Tanya managed to trick herself and eventually moved on, even if her happiness wasn’t sincere at that moment. She had more to worry about than just herself.


Moral of the story? We have many available voices. If you use the mean one, make sure you put it back.