I used to be a yeller.  I would yell at just about everyone and everything.  Someone would disagree with me and I would raise my voice.  Someone would yell at me and I would be sure to yell back.  Someone would cut me off in traffic and I would be sure to yell in anger (now I just flip them off).  Recently I had an epiphany:  yelling really affects your credibility.

There are three good reasons not to yell:

• It takes too much energy.  I look at energy as fuel in your tank and yelling just burns too much gas.
• If someone yells at you and you take a deep breath, pause and respond with “I’m sorry I didn’t realize what you were saying because you were yelling.” That makes them look like what they truly are; an asshole.
• Yelling leads to anger. Think of all the times you made bad decisions in your life.  Chances are it was preceded by you yelling and then followed by making a bad judgment.  The only exception I can think of is years ago doing too many shots of patron and waking up to see two female tundra twins making ham sandwiches in my kitchen while passing a crack pipe.

When is the last time that yelling lead to a positive result?  Yelling at a loved one makes you feel bad afterwards.  Yelling at your spouse or better half usually leads to a slap in the face or at the very least a slamming of a door.  Yelling at a cop will never get you out of a ticket and yelling at a water park while making balloon animals and wearing clown makeup will get you arrested.  Perhaps the latter was not the best example.

Life is too short.  Realize there are a lot of stupid people in this world and try laughing at them instead of yelling at them.  I may not be the smartest person in the world but it’s amazing how people will suddenly view you as a superior intellectual just because you don’t react to adversity by raising your voice.  So this week try to remain calm, cool and collected or I may just have to yell at you.