Living Without Your Anger

For a lot of years, I was a champion ‘angry person’, in that just about everything in my life made me angry. If someone was unkind, or thoughtless, or selfish, or anything I didn’t like, I got angry. And not just upset, but all-out, smoke rolling out of my ears, ANGRY!

But the principles that I was learning led me to realize that every time I got angry, whether I expressed it or not, I was directing Spiritual Power to create future experiences that would mimic or resonate with that anger. I knew that I had a problem to deal with.

I understand where the philosophy of ‘living with your anger’ comes from, as well as the philosophy of express it to get rid of it. But at least in my case, everything I expressed got easier to express, and it just grew and grew. I had to eliminate it completely.

And here’s the major thing that helped with that. Anger is the feeling that things, situations, and people should be something they are not. Anger is judgment. If you take away the judgment, you eliminate the source of the anger. Actually, this is one lesson learned from the Buddhists. If you can eliminate your ‘attachment’ to the world and conditions, you can reach ‘enlightenment’.

I don’t get angry anymore. Frustrated sometimes, but I remind myself that the world is as it is, and I won’t help anything by getting angry, upset, or frustrated.

The transformation in me was like the transformation of a lifelong smoker who got scared out of the habit (yes, anger is a habit) by the reality of the disease (cancer in the case of the smoker). There’s a simple truth; your actions (and thoughts and feelings) today will create your reality tomorrow.

The transformation wasn’t easy, but it did happen. I had to constantly remind myself that everything I thought and felt was directing Power to create my future. I had to ask myself for every little thing (whether anger was involved or not – to develop the habit) “What kind of future do you want to create?”

Eventually, the anger habit was broken, and a new habit took its place.  Another thing that really helped with this was long periods of focusing on the opposite of anger, happiness. Every day for about 6-8 weeks, I sat down to 2 or 3 sessions of 30-60 minutes each and did nothing but focus on love, happiness, harmony, and such. I knew that I had to get used to something other than anger, so I trained my mind and emotions to express something else. Guess what, it worked.

But what was even better, was that it did a lot more for me than simply giving me control over my anger. All of that time focusing on love, happiness, and harmony had directed Power to create some wonderful experiences in my life.

For the first time ever, everything around me seemed to go right. Every person I talked to seemed like they enjoyed my company and wanted to help me in the issues I was dealing with at the time. I had created so much ‘good luck’ in the process of focusing on happiness and love that I started wondering what was wrong.

And guess what that did? Yep, things started to go wrong again. But I quickly realized what was happening and started keeping my focus on what was right, and what I wanted to be right. I know now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that my thoughts and feelings control my reality. And that any habit, even anger, can be conquered.

Now, every morning after I get out of bed, I spend about 20 minutes centering myself and finding the joy and happiness within. People tell me that I have incredible patience. My response is usually, “What good would it do for me to get upset?”