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Episode 496 – the ball of anger

• Starting out with a short story:

TO WHOM DOES THE GIFT BELONG

One day the Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him, hurling all kinds of rude words at him, intended to ridicule and demean him.

The Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man, “Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?”

The young man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.”

The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself.”

Source: A variation of a shorter story falsely attributed to Buddha

•  
• I love this and yet I realize how hard this is
• Like all stories that involve the buddha – I always love the example the buddha displays but I know I am Janine – a human and not buddha
• For me – it will be hard to live up to the same standard
• But I love the idea
• And if we can just keep the idea in our mind next time someone derails us, I think it will do a great deal of good
• Keep this in mind:
• This story focuses on the reaction of the person that felt hurt in some form
• This is not an excuse for the hurtful behavior
  • We may have done something wrong
  • We may have said something inappropriate
  • We may have overseen an important point
  • We may have screwed up
• But yet
• We have options how we show our hurt
• And the people across from us have options in how to respond to us
•  
• I see this like a game of ball
  • Someone threw me a ball
    • Maybe a cop that pulled me over
    • Maybe bad news in my inbox or in a Text
    • Maybe a project at work that didn’t go well
  • I got the ball called unfortunate circumstance
  • And it triggers an emotion in me
    • Quite often, this emotion is anger
  • Now its up to me what to do with the ball
  • I cant change what happened
  • All I have is my feelings
    • I can’t really control where they come from or how strongly they arise
    • This has to do with how I grew up, my experiences up to that point in my life and other factors
  • But I decide what to do with the ball
  • I can throw it to the person across from me
  • This means that I really don’t want to or cant deal with it on my own
    • I can really hit it hard – sharp words, maybe an angry outburst
    • Or I can hit it softly – maybe I whine and complain
  • Or I can keep the ball
    • The circumstance that happened to me
    • And the feelings it brought up
    • They are my own
    • Passing the ball means I cant handle the emotions and need to load them onto others
    • Now they are part of the game, whether they want to or not
  • The ball of anger
  • What is your tendency?
  •  
  • On Saturday I went on a strenuous climb
  • We didn’t rope up,
  • Most of it wasn’t a difficult grade, but it was steep and a killer for my legs
  • I only made it half way up a 3000 ft Mt Laurel on the eastern side of the Sierra
  • When you don’t reach the top of a mountain, you have to descend the same way you came up – which is the hardest way
    • The easier descents are usually on another side of the mountain
  • By the time we finally made it down, which took us longer than climbing it, I was beat
  • Trying to get to the car, I walked fast over rocks and even fell a few times
  • My body was tired
  • After I had fallen the second time I threw the rope I was carrying for a little while on the ground
  • I was angry
  • I didn’t want to carry that rope in my hand anymore because it kept throwing me off balance as I stumbled over uneven terrain
  • But throwing it was not an appropriate response
  • I didn’t say anything
  • I dint yell or complain – I just threw the rope
  • I have worked on controlling my words for a long time now
  • But I couldn’t control my actions
  • I could have easily asked my partner if he could carry it
  • But I couldn’t handle my emotion at that moment
  • I have good reasons – it was a truly tough day
  • But reasons don’t equal excuses
  • I threw the ball of tiredness, an unwanted rope and a long day to my partner
  • Now I made my issues part of his day
  • In my mind- I wished he had just taken the rope from me after I fell the first time
  • So I felt my throwing was justified for an instance
  • But we cannot assume others can guess our feelings
  • Anger is normal
  • It’s a feeling and it cannot be just turned off
  • If anger arises within you, its there for a reason
  • But anger becomes a problem when we don’t know how to handle it
  • the American Psychological Association describes this as follows:

The instinctive, natural way to express anger is to respond aggressively. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats; it inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and behaviors, which allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked. A certain amount of anger, therefore, is necessary to our survival.

On the other hand, we can’t physically lash out at every person or object that irritates or annoys us; laws, social norms, and common sense place limits on how far our anger can take us.

• Lets get back to the ball analogy
• We all get handed the ball – sometimes several times a day
• The resulting emotions are normal
• But then we have to be cognizant about what we do next
•  
• First and foremost, we have to recognize and be clear that anger is a feeling specific to us
• It may have been caused but the ball – the outside event or the person across from us – but we own the feeling
• And therefore – we also own the response
•  
• We all have different feelings
  • My climbing partner gets angry when I move his stuff around – something that would not bother me much
  • I get angry when I feel like he is not watching out for me during challenging moments – something that would never bother him because he is quite self-sufficient out in nature
• We all have different trigger points
• A huge ball for me might be a small one for you
• Or none at all
• Its very personal
• Yet
• When we share them with the other person or the whole world, as some people do via social media, we make our anger known
• The problem with anger – its an emotion
• The facts are one thing
  • I upset you with something I did
• But when we show our anger, we mix facts and emotions
• And this then makes it challenging for the other person to deal with both

• Take the simple example with the rope:
• Had I asked my partner – can you please carry this rope, I cant balance over these rocks with it in my hand – it would be a simple request
• A request is fact based
• Unless – of course – its charged with emotions like whining, yelling, screaming
• But I am certain that we all respond much better to a kind and genuine request than to the emotion-laden one that now also brings out emotions in us
• I made my partner angry with my anger
• It’s a ripple effect
•  
• by letting out our anger freely, like a wild animal, the person is more likely to get angry as well
• the react to it because they feel threated
• and the real issue, the fact that caused the anger – gets drowned, lost, never addressed
• plus, we expose our inability to manage our emotions quite obviously
• and this is where I want to get back to the short story
• the lesson is quite clear:
• don’t take on other people’s anger
• Anytime someone else’s
  • Yells or screams
  • Uses inappropriate words
    • Insults you
    • Puts you down
    • Belittles you or makes fun of you
  • Keep this in mind:
  • Its their emotion
  • These are not facts
  • You being called stupid by an angry person is not an accurate assessment of your intelligence
  • Its simply a ball thrown at you
  • And emotion someone couldn’t handle
  • So they lashed out
  • They threw it at you in the hopes you can handle it for them
    • Like when I threw down the rope
  • You don’t need to catch the ball
  • This is challenging to do because we want to justify ourselves
  • We want to set the other person straight
  • But all we need to do is what the other person wasn’t able to do:
  • We need to separate emotions from facts and only address the facts
  • Try to look past all the messiness and dig for the issue
  • I try to stay calm and ask questions that help clarify what the actual problem is
  • And if its to hard, you can simply choose to be silent
  • Some people are quick with their angry outbursts
  • They have not learned to control themselves
    • such people often excuse their anger by saying that its justified and that the other person should know how they feel
  • feelings can be expressed in a calm and reasoned way
  • with appropriate and respectful words
  • it takes effort to control our emotions
  • but doing so shows that you have mastered self-control and possess emotional intelligence
  •  

• People will always offer us their words, opinions and points of view.
• And they will do so in many different ways, and some of them are hurtful
• But none of that can hurt us unless we let it first land in our heart and mind.
• So protect yourself
• Look for the facts if you can or be silent and walk away
• their emotions are not yours
• and do the same next time you are angry
• keep the ball in mind and be careful how you hand it over
• if you are triggered easily, learn the tools of emotional intelligence
• we have covered them on this podcast before
• become aware of your emotions and learn to master them
• that way you are not a slave to them

much love