ROAD RAGE AND BOARD RAGE BOTH LEAD TO ACCIDENTS

We all lose it. You know that suppressed boiling up inside which can be best dealt with by getting very, very angry and metaphorically (or literally) cutting someone up. Research shows this kills people if you’re driving and kills creativity and clear thinking if you’re in a meeting.

But when you feel great, alert, are happy and at your best you’ll perform better. Good mood equals good performance. Yes, it’s really that simple.

Yet the naysayers and preachers of doom would have it that good creative thinking is best achieved in a world of suffering. This is La Boheme speak - frozen tiny hands and all that.

The thesis is that after he cut off his ear Van Gogh really got going, that Jane Austen suffered in spinster frustration and that Beethoven got better the deafer he got. Human beings survive misfortune in an admirably robust way to be sure but masochism is not the elixir of clear thinking.

My life has been full of seeing futile rage - a crazed executive so angry he was unable to drive out of the car park and reversed at high speed into a wall and then forward into another one. A creative director in an advertising agency hurling a chair - this showed he cared passionately I suppose. Or the executive from a major department store whose motto “when the going gets tough the tough get going” suddenly seemed meaningless as, failing to get the answer he wanted in a phone call, he ripped the phone from the wall and hurled it from a fifth floor window.

This is the stuff of Monty Python.

If you want to have a good day be in a good mood in a place in which you feel comfortable and where a team is committed to trying to solve the problems and exploit the opportunities not blame others or God or bad luck on things not being quite as they’d like.

It’s so much easier being in a good mood.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 12th 2014