Today the news is book-ended by character failures.

Belinda Neal is on the front page for her tirade ten days back at a Central Coast restaurant (”Do you know who the f**k I am?”). She is accused of using her Ministerial position to threaten bar staff, and even yelled she’d have the liquor license of the pub repealed. Apparently staff wanted her to move to another table so they could finish the daily swap from restaurant to dance club.

The back page eulogises the shortest Olympic career in history. Swimmer Nick Darcy had his appeal yesterday, and his bid to be restored to the Olympic team was quashed. He’d brought the sport into disrepute when he assaulted Nick Cowley, another swimmer, six hours after being appointed to the Olympic team. Among other injuries Cowley’s “orbital socket collapsed.” Alcohol was a factor.

In our rush to appoint an illness to every daily grievance, a recent health reporter talked about a new epidemic – Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS). Seems us modern men – when not busying ourselves with metro-sexual face creams and visits to the tailor – are too harried to properly express ourselves. We take on all the troubles of the world (mortgage, career, child raising, relationships) and don’t have the communications skills or the support networks to vent our frustrations. So we continue like boiling submarines until one issue tips us over into IMS (rhymes with PMS). Then we act out in a volcano of pent-up emotion.

Phew! That felt good.

But then you wake up on the back bench of Parliament facing a day of questioning over your outburst. Or you are stalked through airports flying from swim practise to Court of Appeal. And all that “feel good” is gone and you have another tonne of frustration and angst to bottle up.

When learning to be an Executive Coach, I gained one stunningly simple insight. Between stimulus and response, man (and woman) can add thought. If we remove thought between stimulus and response then we’re primal – no better than animals. We scream at bar staff and we elbow fellow swimmers in the “orbital socket.” But if we think – and consider our options – we’re more likely to swap “reactions” for “considered actions.”

I know yesterday Belinda and Nick were re-living their separate and damning evenings. And after the fact they were no doubt inserting many, many thoughts into that moment between stimulus and response.