Venting doesn’t move us forward; it keeps us in place.
People tell you it’s ok to vent after a terrible event.
Someone says “Let it out, it’s ok,” while you wax poetically about some wrong.
It felt good. You got to say all the things they did (all while avoiding your hand in the situation) and your friend (with limited information) let you know how right you are.
Your brain marks this memory, and off you go, using your vent story as the memory of what happened. This imprint is problematic.
- It is difficult to understand the lessons learned with a self-told favorable story.
- A friend supporting you backs up this version of events, making it that much harder to go back to things as they were.
So here is a quick exercise on venting.
Exercise
When you want to “vent” do the following:
- Go to a quiet place. Sit with yourself for a while; the next step is difficult.
- Write a timeline of events, stripping out all emotion.
- By each event, write what you did to cause that point to happen and write the other person.
- Leave it for an hour or so.
- Go back and write what you did. This second pass is critical because there is a high chance that the first pass sounds like venting.
- Find the lessons on your end.
This exercise is difficult and venting is not. Venting, however, doesn’t help you understand or make you better. Taking the time to do this exercise improves your decision-making, which means fewer opportunities to vent overall.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 