Conquer Anger: Stoic Strategies For Lasting Calm

This guided talk delves deep into the complexities of anger, its impact on your life, and how to keep it in check. Drawing from Stoic philosophy and personal experiences, this session offers a vivid look at how anger can be both destructive and contagious, often derailing rational thinking. Learn practical strategies like empathy-based perspective-shifting and the power of choice in diffusing anger. Rooted in wisdom and sprinkled with relatable anecdotes, this talk aims to equip you with the insights needed to navigate volatile emotions and live a more harmonious life.

Transcript

What are my thoughts on keeping one's temper in check?

So the Stoics saw anger,

Which is related to losing one's temper,

As being an emotion that is distinct from other emotions.

There were three main reasons for this.

The first one is that when someone is in the grip of anger,

They can't turn back.

When they're really in a rage,

It's very difficult to turn back at that point.

Second reason is that anger is contagious.

If you look at a mob or a riot,

You very rarely see mobs of depressed people or mobs of anxious people.

But you can find thousands of people that are stirred up by a speech from a dictator that actually get angry and annoyed and lose their temper at a particular type of individual or a particular type of circumstance if the speaker is charismatic enough.

And this type of group anger can cause a lot of destruction.

And the third reason is that anger completely turns off one's rational mind.

It's a form of madness.

When someone is sad or anxious,

They are definitely not themselves.

I used to really struggle with anxiety,

And that's why I have a lot of meditations and courses on anxiety.

But if you ever met me when I was feeling very anxious,

I would still be me,

But I would be a very distracted and withdrawn version of me.

When someone is in a rage,

They can say things and do things that they don't even want to do,

That they don't even agree with.

When someone's really angry,

They can punch their best friend in the face.

When someone's very angry,

And this has happened with powerful people throughout history,

They've had people that they liked killed or tortured because they lost their temper.

Just think for a moment,

How many lives have been ruined by anxiety?

Now,

Anxiety is a big problem,

Right?

Like if you're experiencing anxiety,

Your own life is going to suffer,

Right?

You're not going to meet your potential.

You're going to feel stuck.

And the people around you,

They may suffer too,

Because they have to deal with someone who has particular kinds of triggers and anxieties.

For example,

If a young child is being brought up by an anxious mother,

The mother may instill certain anxieties onto the child,

Right?

So anxiety can be problematic for the person experiencing it and for the people around the anxious individuals.

But if you look at something like anger,

Anger is at the source for so many violent crimes,

So many murders,

So many assaults,

So many endings of all types of relationships,

So many problems within family dynamics.

Anger is deadly.

You go to a prison and ask people how they murdered someone,

How they assaulted someone.

How often will you hear about people just losing it,

Losing their temper,

Going into a rage?

There's this idea that I like called moral luck.

And moral luck essentially means that many of us do things or act in ways that are not morally correct,

But we are lucky and we get away with it.

Whereas someone else might be doing the exact same thing as us,

But they just get unlucky.

A good example of this would be texting when driving.

You know,

A lot of people have texted when driving,

But they didn't kill anyone.

I just saw someone in the news recently texting while driving,

Killed someone,

Got five years in jail,

Banned from driving for six years.

This individual has a one-year-old.

This individual,

Because they were texting and driving,

Has now missed out on bringing up their young child who they loved dearly.

Same behavior many people have done,

But unlucky.

And moral luck also applies to anger.

Many of us have lost our tempers.

Many of us have been provoked.

Many of us have hurt other people,

Emotionally or physically,

But nobody got hurt.

Nobody got killed.

But what if you were unlucky?

What if you were intoxicated?

Or the person provoking you provoked you too much?

Or what if things got physical and you retaliated with the same level of anger and disregard for a reason that you have done in the past and someone got badly hurt?

Maybe you pushed someone and they cracked their head on a pavement.

Same anger,

But this time you were unlucky.

And that's something to keep in mind.

Anger can really make you act in ways that aren't even you.

Anger often comes up when there's a sense of a boundary being crossed.

You know,

If you take someone who's very agreeable and timid and shy and reasonable,

If they get bullied or violated,

This ability to shift into someone else and act in these ways that are uncharacteristic of themselves can be very useful.

And that can lead them to punching the person who's bullying them and therefore end the cycle of abuse.

So all quote unquote negative emotions have a useful evolutionary mechanism in place.

But being human is hard and living in this society in which we were not evolved to live can trigger these different evolutionary mechanisms in ways that are not productive.

And so back to the question,

What are my thoughts on keeping one's anger in check?

I think the first step is what I've been attempting to do so far in answering this question.

And that is try to see just how destructive anger could be for you.

You know,

Really imagine what you're capable of if you absolutely lost your temper one day.

And what destruction,

Irreversible destruction could you cause?

In my younger years,

Anger was definitely something I felt from time to time.

And I remember one particular time when I was younger,

I got drunk.

I woke up the next day and I had a broken foot and my phone was broke and there was all these different issues,

You know,

Ways that I've acted and things that I said to people.

And it was just essentially chaos,

You know,

Chaos.

And it was like as if it was someone else,

You know,

Because that's what anger does.

And that was a really big wake up call for me.

That was a point in my life where I realized that I need to protect myself from anger because anger can be very dangerous.

Anger is an interesting emotion because some people are proud of their anger.

You know,

It gives them a certain kind of edge,

A certain kind of confidence.

I tell people how it is.

I speak my mind.

Anger can even be funny.

You know,

When someone loses their temper over something small,

That can be the source of good comedy on TV.

You know,

When it comes to things like domestic abuse,

Anger is one of the things that controls the victim.

They don't want to bring anger out of the partner.

And so anger can give one a sense of power and give one a sense of control.

But it also comes with all of these costs.

And there's a price of admission for feeling anger.

And the question is,

Do you want to pay that price?

Destroyed relationships,

Lack of reason,

Taking big risks by adding that kind of chaos to your life.

And so I could tell you different technique,

Tell you the virtue of being patient and waiting and having a meditation practice.

I could tell you that every time someone provokes you to the point of anger,

You're essentially giving your power away.

I could tell you all of these different things and we could talk about different techniques and all of them are useful.

But it has to start with this intention of I refuse to allow myself to go down the road of rage.

You know,

When you meet people who just don't drink alcohol,

It's like,

Nope,

Not going to do it.

Don't drink alcohol.

Sorry,

But you're in a party.

Everyone's drinking.

Yeah,

But not for me.

Sorry,

I don't drink anymore.

Got to have that attitude with anger.

But like that person,

Like really annoyed you and cross your boundaries.

OK,

I'll deal with it.

But I'm not going to allow myself to lose it.

And if I start to feel myself lose it,

I stop everything I'm doing and I deal with it,

Whatever it takes.

Maybe I have to leave the situation.

Maybe I have to go meditate for 10 minutes.

I'll do anything that it takes.

OK,

You'll find a way,

But you need to be on guard.

You need to be on the lookout for it.

A big thing for me,

If you want to talk about specifics,

Is tapping into empathy.

Usually we get triggered by other people.

And that's usually the source of our temper tantrums.

It's sometimes related to just circumstances,

You know,

Things break or the environment gives you something that you didn't want,

Right?

That's fine.

But very often it's to do with other people.

And and one of the games that I play in my mind is I take a very unempathic view of the situation and then I switch to take a very empathic view of the situation.

I hold both in my mind.

So let's just say that I'm driving down the road and someone cuts me off and beeps and stares into my car as if I've done some terrible deed to them.

The unempathic view is they're a terrible driver.

They almost crash into my car.

What kind of crazy person is this?

How dare they look at me like that?

All right.

That's the unempathic view.

OK,

The empathic view is they believe they were driving the right way.

It's possible that I'm wrong and they're right.

I don't know.

Maybe they're in a rush.

Maybe they're stressed out.

Maybe they've got a crying baby in the back of the car,

Which I know that's very difficult to drive when that's going on.

Who knows what's going on?

Maybe they have low blood sugar.

Maybe they're just trying to do their best.

And this is the way that they've learned to drive.

Maybe they don't know any other way.

That's the empathic view.

And by contemplating both of these views,

The unempathic view and the empathic view,

Now you have a choice.

Both are kind of right and both are kind of wrong.

What do you want?

Where do you want to put your attention?

And I'll tell you which one makes the anger go quicker.

It's not the unempathic view.

Reviews

A masterpiece of clear thinking

We need more of this practical psychology in our world, in our schools, at work, at home and especially in our own minds . 🙏

Very insightful

Straight talk about anger and it's destructive force. Jon also presents a useful tactic for diffusing anger when it first arises, before it becomes rage. I appreciate Jon has a to-the-point style in his talks that I appreciate.