TL;DR
Whom am I speaking to? Who is this going to help?
My Practical Experience
My Mind Dump.
What is anger?
“Anger is a loss of control over the situation.” – Naval Ravikant
Exert from
The following notes come directly from Dan Mager, you can find his original post here
Anger takes place in the present when life isn’t going the way we think it should. In this way, anger has a corrosive effect — it is a “fight” or struggle against present-moment reality, and a refusal to accept what is.
Most often, anger is a secondary emotion. It can take shape instantly and unconsciously in response to something or someone that evokes feelings of
- hurt
- fear
- inadequacy
When most people experience these primary emotions, they feel vulnerable, and their energy and attention are focused inward. For many people, this revealing of vulnerability creates so much distress that the underlying emotions are automatically transformed into anger.
Anger serves several defensive purposes:
- It works as a shield that deflects uncomfortable primary emotions so they can be avoided or kept at a distance.
- It provides a sense of power and control.
- It directs focus outward to identifiable, external scapegoats (individuals, groups, institutions).
- It is almost always easier and more comfortable to focus on the actions of others than it is to focus on oneself.
Rollo May
According to Rollo May, hatred and resentment are the price of denied freedom–something arising to fill the place of denied inner freedom when outer freedom is denied. Hating or resenting is often the person’s only way to keep from committing psychological or spiritual suicide; the person’s capacity for to eventually hate or feel angry is also a marker of his inner potentialities for standing against the oppressor. Freedom is man’s capacity to a hand in his own development.
How is Anger different from Intense Passion?
- Anger is driven by fear
- Fear of what? Fear of losing control
- Passion is driven by fearlessness
- Fearlessness that’s equipped by sound principles and values
Lessons from my mother
Here are two takeaways to this story:
- No one can offend you without your consent
- Hurt people hurt people
The label we place on people (calling them “disrespectful”, “horrible”, “losers”, etc) take power away from us as individuals to the person who we perceive is hurting us. These labels are like keys to our emotional warehouse; the moment we place a label on someone, we are granting them permission into our emotional warehouse–now they are in control of our emotions, and we cannot make accurate, meaningful decisions while they take the driver’s seat of our emotions.
Instead of giving them the key to our emotional warehouse, look with at our keys (the labels), and seek to change the locks (change the labels) so that no one can come inside and control our emotions.
How do we change the locks? Through reminder. What reminders? Two of them:
- No one can offend you without your consent
- Hurt people hurt people
By recognize the people who you perceive as a threat as people who are hurting themselves, you cultivate the minimum amount of empathy to put things into perspective. Remember: the cure to anger is perspective (David J. Lieberman’s book, “Never get angry again”).
Once we’ve gained perspective, we are in a position to acknowledge the fact that no one can offend you without your consent. Would you be upset by a child who calls you a lizard? No, because it’s not true, nor do you care about the opinion of a child because you don’t consent to his opinion of you. Why can’t we extend the same reasoning to adults? Is the opinion of the person whom you perceive as threatening going to harm you? ONLY IF YOU CHOOSE TO LET IT.
What about my image?
Many people respond to perceived disrespect by asking themselves, “what will this say about me if I allow this? How will this make me look?”
One thing I greatly enjoyed reading from David J. Lieberman’s book is that there are 3 categories of decisions we can make:
- Based on what makes us look good (ego)
- Based on what makes us feel good (ego)
- Based on what we know is actually good (soul)
The third option comes directly from the source of inner strength. To ignore how people view you, or how you may feel afterwards, and to truly dig deep into what you’ve reasoned to be true from your own retrospection, study, dialogue, prayer, and meditation. These lead to the types of choices that truly make us free.
Let’s face it. As long as your self-image depends on others, you will struggle to find peace in doing what your soul knows to be true.