How to never be Angry again | Abraham Twerski

"The concept of anger I think we have to
think about the phases of anger there
are three phases of anger one is
somebody provokes me I feel angry okay I
don't have any control over that right
then there's the phase of anger of how
do I react to it right do I walk away do
I respond do I punch the guy in the face
do I call them with some nesting it
that's my reaction to anger and then the
other thing is okay I didn't have any
choice to be feeling angry when I was
provoked
how long am I going to hold on to that
anger an hour a day 22 years right so in
order to keep things straight I give
these three phases three different names
the feeling of anger I call anger the
reaction to anger I call rage and the
hanging onto the anger is called
resentment right and then if you clarify
it I said okay I can do nothing about my
feeling of anger other than perhaps take
some things in perspective right one of
my father's teachings that helped me a
great deal was that when somebody did
something in my father which should have
provoked anger my father would say you
know what he did was so foolish if he
only knew how fully said was what he did
he wouldn't have done it so you know I
feel sorry for the person for being such
a fool but if you feel sorry for a
person how can you be angry at him you
know I feel pity for pity and anger
doesn't go together but nevertheless I
can't control how I feel when provoked
but I certainly can control what my
reaction is going to be
and finally how long do I hang on to the
resentments my greatest lesson came from
Alcoholics Anonymous where somebody said
harboring a resentment is allowing
someone who you don't like to live
inside your head without paying any rent
and I'm not that kind of a guy I'm not a
nice guy like that to let somebody else
pay so hey help me get rid of
resentments reacting to anger took me a
while right to be able to control my
rage and then I had to realize that yeah
this is part of my being human animals
react with rage when when provoked
i as a human being I'm supposed to be
above that I'm a northern Homo sapiens
so I learned how to control my anger so
I think those are if a person keeps
those things in mind right and there's
some people who feel guilty for feeling
angry right especially at a parent you
don't have a choice okay
the feeling of anger is nothing so if
you don't have a choice there's no
reason to feel guilty about it how you
react now my suggestion is keep an anger
Journal right here's what happened today
right somebody did this is that and
here's what how I did right then at
night it's it at the time that I'm
provoked I think it isn't clear because
I'm in this pressure to respond but at
night when I look over what happened
during the daytime and I say did I
handle that in the best way possible
could I have done something better and
that becomes a lesson for the next time
so I think keeping a journal about anger
and how we respond to it is an excellent
way of them because ultimately if I am
enraged it doesn't hurt the other person
as much as it hurts me"