Chapter 2 – “Shoulds”: Keep ’em Rigid (Use Cialis if You Have to)

This chapter will teach practitioners at all levels (except The Gifted and Weirdos, of course) how to increase their toxic hostility by creating unrealistic and inflexible expectations. A case study will illustrate key points. A Caution will be provided about sharing insights with any member of The Gifted.

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Shoulds are critical to the development of an angry life. So important that, as an anger-creation strategy, they have this chapter all to themselves.

Everyone has expectations of themselves, others and the world. Expectations are a tidy way to keep your life organized without having to think too much, and play an enormous role in your perceived quality of life.

Increase your anger by creating unrealistic expectations.

Sustain that anger by refusing to learn life lessons.

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Be A Double Winner: Unrealistic and Inflexible

Ramp up your anger by rigidly defining how the world should be and how everyone else should act and then adhere to those expectations as though they, and you, were coated in Krazy Glue.

Keep it simple. Just remember to establish immutable expectations about the Universe’s evolution and the sine qua non consequences when those assumptions aren’t satisfied to your satisfaction.

The Gifted share a fundamental belief: Life should always be fair and right.

Increase your anger by repeating this mantra every morning when you wake, and every evening in place of your prayers: “Life should always be fair. Life should always be right.”

Don’t just take my word for it. Make this your practice until you’re brainwashed. Then try to live your life, or even just read the news, without your anger boiling over.

This will have the effect of creating a relentless sense of frustration. And the psychological research is clear – there are few better pathways to anger than frustration.

And, let’s face it, just griping about fairness is child’s play for of The Gifted. For The Gifted, “Life should be fair” really means: Things should always go smoothly and well for them.

Create the most rigid, narrow, unforgiving definition of what going smoothly means in any situation. Then embrace that definition as though it’s one of The Ten Commandments and vow that any deviation from it will precipitate your earnest response.

All this can be further translated to: You should never have to tolerate bother of any kind, and anything you deem a problem, or even just a mild irritant, should be corrected immediately.

Repeat that as your daily mantra for a couple years and you’ll be raging like a champ.

Once you’ve fully absorbed the message that you shouldn’t have to tolerate the slightest inconvenience, you can effortlessly create an ever-growing list of demands that other people, and life itself, need to change until you’re placated.

Here are some examples to get you started:

• “Vegan lasagna, honey? No one should have to live like this.”
• “But I ordered my Oculus Virtual Reality headset from Amazon Prime almost two hours ago! It should already be here. I shouldn’t have to live in this reality when I don’t want to.”
• “She should show more appreciation to me filling in for her last week. Sure, she said, ‘Thank you’ in a heartfelt way, made a short but poignant speech of recognition during yesterday’s staff meeting, and gave a sizable donation to a charity in my name, but, seriously, I expected her to at least hire a skywriting plane to scrawl, ‘Thank you for saving me. You’re the most helpful coworker ever.’ Ungrateful people like that should never be allowed to ask for favors.”

Loosely translated, all these demands amount to the following message: Life should stop everything it’s doing right now and focus exclusively on your needs to make sure that things go well so that you never have to deal with any sort of bother. Anything less is unacceptable and you’re prepared to make sure someone, anyone, knows how unacceptable it is. You might just roll your eyes for spectators, sigh loudly, ensconce yourself in a crowd and mutter for twenty minutes, or yell for everyone in earshot to enjoy.

The key is to stubbornly adhere to every expectation you’ve created at all times, regardless of contextual realities.

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MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK! Create unrealistic expectations for yourself to enjoy a lifetime of depression!

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The most effective way to sustain your anger’s energy is to refuse to accept the daily frustrations of life.

The Gifted react to daily annoyances as though each one is a novel, unique event rather than one of life’s normal, patterned bothers. Someone cuts them off in traffic and they are shocked, as though no person has ever experienced this kind of abuse before. Then they look around as if to say, “Can you believe that happened?” as though it hasn’t happened to them, and just about everyone else, multiple times a day for as long as anyone could remember.

This bears rereading, because one of the barriers to disproportionate, sustained anger is fatigue on the parts of the angry person and, more often, everyone else within earshot, such as coworkers, neighbors, and the mail carrier. Sometimes those other people get tired of all the outbursts and say something about it. If it happens enough, the budding rage-aholic might get exhausted from all the complaints and give up their angry aspirations.

So, to be clear, the best source of fury is any new reason to feel like a victim. And what more reliable way to make yourself feel like a victim then to treat life’s usual annoyances (e.g., traffic jams, lines at the store, and telemarketing calls about your car’s extended warranty) as novel, horrid situations that violate your sacred expectations and demand immediate, poorly-considered action?

In other words, expand your list of shoulds in order to treat every one of life’s predictable, routine frustrations as a new form of victimhood.

This persistent lack of flexibility will fuel your self-righteous ire in any situation

AND

Endear you to family, friends, and spouses (yes, that’s plural).

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CASE STUDY: ADAM’S APPOINTMENT

Adam was a sales rep and on the verge of being late to his next appointment, with Bargain Plastic Surgery. He really needed to get some sales before quarter-end next week and figured BPS was his best chance for a big, last-minute order. Problem was, he had to get face-to-face with Doctor Bargain, and that meant getting past the office gatekeepers. Fortunately, the office staff accepted bribes in the form of donuts and gummy bears.

He hurried to the nearest grocery store, where he was slowed several times by the same person who somehow kept getting in front of him and taking up all the space in every aisle while they moved slower than a three-toed sloth and talked loudly on their phone.

Adam stared daggers at the back of this person’s head and made a point of marching by them in an overly rushed fashion every time he had the chance to pass. He eventually grabbed a bag of gummies, a couple six-packs of carbonated sugar water, cleaned out the bakery section’s remaining twenty donuts and added seven crullers for good measure.

He sprinted to the checkout aisles and dove into the shortest line. “Awesome,” he thought, “only a couple people in front of me.” He checked the clock in his head and decided he should be able to make the appointment on time.  

Adam quietly quipped, “Spend a few bucks on pastries, get a couple grand in bonus. Now that’s a bargain!” He laughed out loud and decided he was the funniest person alive.

A few moments into his fantasizing, just at the part where he was sailing to Aruba (he didn’t know how to sail, but assumed it would be simple enough), he realized his grocery line hadn’t moved. At all.

He glared in the direction of the register and only then noticed the “In Training” sign on the cashier’s shirt.

He was incensed.

“You gotta be ##%^*!@ kidding me,” he thought to himself. “Since when did the world decide it was okay to make people stand around for thirty minutes to buy a couple donuts?”

He was furious at being this irate. He’d been admonished in the past by the Weirdos in his life for not distracting himself at moments like this. So he took a few deep breaths and played a game on his phone. But really he was fantasizing about using the bonus check he hadn’t earned yet to take Mixed Martial Arts lessons so he could throttle the scheduling manager who put this cashier-in-training in his line.

“Why should I have to distract myself?” Adam thought. “This line is the problem. It had better start moving! I shouldn’t be stuck here right now. I should already be paid up, out the door, and at my appointment!”

Adam fumed until he finally checked out and paid for his things. The cashier was professional and friendly, but nothing was going to change Adam’s mind about the store. As he walked briskly out the sliding glass door, Adam thought, “If this stupid grocery would learn how to retain its employees, maybe everyone wouldn’t have to wait in line for three hours. This place should be closed forever.”

He was proud of himself for keeping things in the proper perspective.

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What You Can Learn from Adam

Adam created unrealistic and inflexible expectations. He set himself up to rage the moment he “checked the clock in his head and decided he should make the appointment on time.”

Adam made the most of his chance by refusing to change his expectations despite external realities, such as the cashier being in-training.

He focused on how the line being slow violated his expectation that he’d sail through and be out of the store in no time, but never checked his expectation itself.

Adam even became angry at being irate. He refused to take steps to calm himself and reminded himself that the problem was the cashier-in-training, not him or his expectations.

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Adam’s level of competence takes time, commitment, and foresight. Therefore, look for opportunities to create unrealistic expectations for yourself and then stick to them no matter what.

Intermediate students, your development is at a critical point. You might stagnate or even regress. To ensure your progression to Advanced status, never check your expectations and assumptions again. Never even check if you’ve checked them. Unchecked, unrealistic, and rigid expectations will help you take your anger all the way to the top!

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Warning: Don’t Tell Your Angry Friends What You’re Learning

Now that you are starting to understand how to create anger for yourself, you might be tempted to share your newfound insights with your angriest friends, who are members of The Gifted.

Do not share your newfound knowledge with any of The Gifted. This book is for people who want to make themselves angrier, not for people who are already blessed with wrath.  

The Gifted will not recognize themselves in this book. In fact, it’s likely that when you enthusiastically point out the similarities between their personal traits and what you’re learning, they’ll become very defensive.

For example, if you mention this chapter’s lessons on expectations while your angriest friend is self-righteously spouting about the slow (by their standards) service at some restaurant, they will respond with some version of:

“You’ve obviously taken what I said out of context because you’re just trying to be a jerk. Why shouldn’t I expect people to just do their jobs because they’re *&#%!#  paid jobs so you gotta do ‘em right and why don’t people take more pride in their *&#%! work because we’re all counting on each other to so, you know, that’s what society is and if you don’t have *&#%! society it’s chaos so everyone just needs to follow the *&#%! rules they’re pretty simple you know! *&#%!”

(A microscopic inhale)

“When I was wait staff my sophomore year or was it junior in high school whatever but the point is at least we did our jobs I mean look at them standing around if I were staff I’d stay sooooo much more on top of it I don’t know why they can’t just *&#%! come over here and take our *&#%! drink order because we’ve been here for like twenty *&#%! minutes! *&#%!*&#%!*&#%!”

(One singular, long breath high in the chest as though preparing to fill a balloon)

“I mean *&#%! seriously, if I was the *&#%! *&#%! manager *&#%! …” 

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Remember this hypothetical rant. It is a demonstration of how to think about the world so that anger is the predictable result of any situation. And we’ll cover many of the most productive ways to distort your thinking next.

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Thanks for reading! Chapter 3 coming soon!