Flight Attendant-Steven Slater's Rage & Why People Are Rallying Around Him

Because so many people are talking about the flight attendant who flew off the handle, I decided to address this in today's blog instead of Lesson 9 which I will get back to tomorrow.

Look at the man's face: Pain, despair , frustration, and tension. Is he angry? No. He is way past angry. Remember anger is a feeling. It is an emotion. What he expressed in the way he spoke to the passenger, then grabbing beers, then opening the plane and extending the slide are "actions and behaviors" that numb feelings of pain, despair, frustration, etc.

Now to answer the question why are so many thousands and thousands of people posting praising comments of his behavior and actions:

Because lots of people are full of rage and raging feels temporarily empowering, but here’s the rub: it is only an illusion. Actually rage weakens the rager and the person who takes the brunt of the rage.

Rage has moved more people out of relationships than U-Haul. It shoves everyone out the door, out of lives, or out of business. Rage pushes everyone away because no one wants to be around it and yet people are drawn to at the same time because rage is contagious like the flu. It can spread through families, corporations, countries.

Rage basically says —in no uncertain terms— I do not value you or this relationship enough to warrant an expenditure of my time or energy to try to achieve resolution.

Rage says you have a problem and that’s the problem—no solution in sight. Many people like Steven Slater have become frustrated at work, full of tension and stress wondering if they will keep their job and then there are those who hate their jobs and that breeds another kind of dissatisfaction that ends up in all kinds of raging behaviors and actions.

Is Steven Slater a working man’s hero? No. He is a very distressed fellow who needs lots of attention, empathy and a lot anger management.

Question: Have you ever wanted to open the door and slide out of a job like Slater has done? If the answer is yes you probably won't get the media attention he has.

For more information go to johnleebooks.com and read The Anger Solution: The Proven Method for Attaining Calm and Developing Healthy, Long-Lasting Relationships, Facing the Fire: Experiencing and Expressing Anger Appropriately, The Missing Peace--all available on Amazon.com.