Anger 02

Hi All, Welcome to MoneyWell's blog,

Anger is one of an emotional state humans could experience. Everyone’s response or reaction to the anger is different. But one thing remains same in all of us, is the biological response which is happening inside our body. Anger triggers a series of bio-chemical reactions inside human body. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of adrenaline and noradrenalin. As a stress hormone, noradrenalin affects parts of the brain where attention and responding actions are controlled. There are lot more technical happenings inside our body when we get angry. Let us start this post with a quote as usual.

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” - Buddha.

In our day to day life, there are many times we get angry. I am trying to list some of that.

1. Waiting in a bus stop/ railway station / air port for quite long time. The bus / train / flight which have to arrive on time haven’t.
2. Traffic Jam
3. While driving we come across somebody violating traffic rules.
4. The attendance is very low for the presentation you organize.
5. The person, who you are talking to, is not listening to you.
6. Your spouse does not understand your point of view.
7. Your new washing machine is not working.

And there are so many reasons we can grow the list. While we read this, it might look very simple reasons. But the amount and intensity of anger we show for these simple reasons are not in proportion. Here I am forced to mention (again) a quote by Aristotle.

“Anyone can become angry – that’s easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way- this is not easy”. - Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics

Going by this, it invalidates all the simple reasons I listed above for getting angry. I feel the main reason why we get angry is “anyone can easily become angry” nothing else.

One real story.

I have seen very small kids are also getting angry. Once I have seen a kid (about 2 years old) was demanding his father to buy him a balloon. His father refused to buy that. After a while the kid started screaming aloud the demand. Still his father is not buying that. The kid got angry and started to hit his father and roll on the platform in the road. The kid got so much angry he couldn’t scream now and he is gasping. Already some people started to watch this now. Now his father became very angry by the kid’s act. It made him feel shame in front of others. Now he started to shout at his kid and hit severely in public.

I realized where the kid has learnt to become angry. We have lot of such real stories with us. It might have happened to us or we would have witnessed or heard. Take any one of the stories, preferably yours, and analyze the situation by answering to the following questions

1. How did I express my anger? Did I express it in a right way?
2. Whom did I express my anger to? Is he/she/it is the right person?
3. Did I express my anger to the right degree? Or did the intensity of anger I express is proportionate with the reason?
4. Did I express my anger at the right time?

I can challenge most of you for the answers. None of us would have got “yes” for all the questions. This means we have not learnt how to get and express anger appropriately.

I have a question for all of us,

Does any one of us use a big AXE to cut vegetables for cooking?

No right! Why because, It is not the right tool to be used. We have a vegetable cutter or appropriate knife for doing that job. We have different kind of tools for cutting vegetables, chopping meat, and so on.

Similarly anger is also a tool which helped, prevented and saved humans when their life is pretended often by animals and other human beings. Anger is such a powerful tool when it is used inappropriately, could cause lots of damage to the host.

Please remember to ask this four questions when you are about to get angry and never praise disproportionate and inappropriate anger.


Take care,

I feel therefore I am

MoneyWell

Tolerance-02- Greatest Gift of the mind

Hi All, Welcome to MoneyWell's blog,

As a continuation of thought process on tolerance, here comes the next post on it.

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these - George Washington Carver

It is very true in real scenario. We are either intolerant with strong or weak or both. How it is expressed? Some times the intolerance is expressed as an angry wawl or bang on the table or mostly in an unproductive form.

Why it is so, where it is rooted from?

This is about one of my friend. With his permission I am sharing this story.

He is very special from his childhood because of the fact that he is the only child of his parents many years after their marriage. He also enjoyed being in limelight even in neighborhood. He is having a habit of eating in a special plate (made in silver) which has three partitions. He will eat the food, if all three portions of it is filled with dishes he likes. He will never touch the plate even if one portion of the plate has a dish he did not like. Most of the dishes he didn’t like, so whenever they are cooking they will make a separate effort to cook for him. If sometime they couldn’t make it, he will never touch the plate filled with the dish he didn’t like.

Now he has grown up and working in an reputed company after hopping many companies. When I met him sometime back he shared the problem he is having in office. He don’t like People

• Who are having different opinion than him
• Who argues with him and win
• Who orders/guides him to do his work
• Who make fun on him

And the list grows, its not only that he didn’t like them. If anyone of them are near by he couldn’t be normal. He is getting restless and tensed. He also shouts at people on whom he thinks he could do so. When it comes to superiors he couldn’t do anything. He hates to go to office. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else. He forgets to pay his house rent for more than 2 months, so he got a notice from his house owner. He couldn’t stay in any company for more than 7 to 9 months, because of his habit of intolerance.

Basically he wasn’t having tolerance. Which I feel is rooted from the habits fostered by his parents. When I told him my findings and roots of his habit, he was astonished. So if we are not careful in responding to our kids it could lead to some greater disasters in later age of the kid like this.

So how my friend has developed tolerance now, that is what we are going to see now

We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when we come in contact with someone who creates unpleasant experiences. According to Shantideva, enemies are really good for us as we can learn a lot from them and build our inner strength – Dalai Lama

So I asked my friend to always be near the colleague by whom he gets irritated most. Asked him to maintain a notebook to write what are all he felt when he was near that colleague . He was very sincerely following this habit, because he realized that he needs to come out of this for a normal survival. Now he has improved a lot to level in which he could laugh at his initial notes on the irritating colleagues.

He is very happy now. I would like to end this post with a quote.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle - Helen Keller.

Take care,

I feel therefore I am

MoneyWell