What Makes You Angry?
My dearly loved brothers, understand this: Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. -- James 1:19
What makes you angry? Now don’t get all worldly here. It’s too easy to list social injustice and war and things that happen to other people. What makes YOU angry? What’s that button that is sure to set you off?
Let’s take it a step further. Do you have a problem with anger? I’m not talking about hitting or being verbally abusive, though those extremes definitely indicate a problem. My question has more to do with day to day stuff, like traffic, and work, and kids that won’t clean their rooms. Do you find yourself getting angry every day? Maybe even several times a day?
Certain things make us angry. They just do. We can pretend we’re not angry. We can hold it all inside, refusing to let others know. But they know. Because it always comes out in one form or another.
The key to stopping anger is finding out what the triggers are and why they send us from calm to heated in two seconds flat. My trigger is being ignored, like I don’t exist, that my opinion doesn’t matter, that I’m of no importance. I could psycho-analyze myself, outlining all the whys, but I won’t bore you. Let’s just say that people who have no respect for me do not make me a happy camper.
A friend shook his head one day as he outlined something his six-year-old daughter had done. He struggled for calm, took several deep breaths, then asked her why she continued to do something that she knew made him mad. No answer. I laughed and told him that it was because she knew she’d get a reaction from him. He agreed. She’s young but she already knows how to push those buttons.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at letting things go. When you start burying people you love and letting go of old dreams, life gains a different perspective. You start to understand that most things simply aren’t worth the effort anger takes. And, honestly, most people aren’t either.
Why waste time getting upset at another driver on the road? Why hold a grudge against a co-worker? Why get upset when your child doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do? Just hand out the punishment, turn a deaf ear to the whining, and move on. Life is too short for battle every day.
So slow down, take a deep breath, and let it go. While some anger is justified and understandable, most anger just zaps energy best used to cultivate joy.
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