The one thing you can do today to reduce your anger… Stop labeling. Labels like “idiot,” “fool,” “monster,” or even worse, may seem like quick ways to express frustration or disapproval, but they also limit our ability to truly understand and engage with others. When we slap a label on someone, we stop seeing them as a complex, multifaceted human being with their own unique experiences, fears, and motivations. Instead, we see them only through the lens of that label — simplified, reduced, and often dehumanized. Besides the more insulting labels, we also can be quick to reach for all sorts of political labels, like “left,” “right,” “conservative,” “liberal” — even as those labels are often insufficient to describe the complexity of people’s views. Polarization can lead us to being too quick to label people as on the “other side” when they disagree with us about one thing (and this can amplify our divides). All these labels don’t just make us more angry; they make us less empathetic...