Stoic Anger Management: Protect Your Peace Of Mind

Anger narrows your choices and makes you pay for the first reaction twice. This 64-minute Stoic masterclass helps you catch it earlier and protect your peace of mind.
Drawing on Seneca, you will explore three dangers of anger: it makes us a slave, accelerates quickly, and spreads between people. You will also learn practical ways to interrupt that momentum, including premeditatio malorum, journalling, the physiological sigh, sleep and exercise, compassion, boundaries and the question, "Is this worth sacrificing my peace of mind over?"
Stoicism is not a promise that you will never feel angry. It is a practice of noticing the first movement, understanding what anger is trying to protect, and choosing what happens next.
From Jon Brooks, whose Stoic work has been played more than 225,000 times on Insight Timer.
Return to this masterclass whenever anger starts narrowing your choices and notice whether you catch the first movement sooner.

Transcript

This is gonna be the first talk that I've ever put out on anger. The thing I wanna stress from the beginning is that when we talk about anger, I genuinely believe that it's a useful topic for discussion for every human on earth. I don't think that only people who experience a lot of anger should steady anger. I think every human being experiences levels of frustration, Annoyance, Irritation, Some of us have full-blown tantrums and rage, And we kind of lash out. But there's a spectrum of anger, And it's not only for people that feel intense anger, Although it's also useful for people that experience intense anger. It's a human thing to get frustrated. There are many different reasons why we might get frustrated or angry. From an evolutionary sense, We could say that, Well, Why do we have anger to begin with? You know, It's obviously there for a reason. You know, Why would we have this button that could be pushed that could turn us into, You know, Crazy animals where reason and logic gets turned off? And one theory is, Is that anger is the appropriate response to when our boundaries get crossed. So if we tell someone, No, Thank you, If we tell someone, No, Thank you, No, Thank you, Don't do that, And then they abuse us in some way or bully us, Mistreat us, Then the reasonable part of ourselves clearly didn't work. So you could say then anger is the backup plan. You know, Maybe there's a logic evolutionarily to being a bit irrational, To kind of lashing out, Showing our teeth and our claws and, You know, Essentially sending the signal that if you mess with me, I'm going to bring chaos into your life. I'm going to fight you, You know, And that could make someone back off. So there's definitely a reason for it to exist. The question is, Is it as useful now as it might have been in, You know, Hunter-gatherer days, Where we didn't have as much structure in society, We didn't have law and order. Yeah, We didn't have societies that made great efforts to keep us safe. You know, It was quite a dog-eat-dog kind of world 100, 000 years ago. So anger might have been more useful then than it is now. And then, You know, Beyond that, We could say that we typically get angry when we have expectations about the world that then suddenly get broken. So an example that I would give you here is if you're driving somewhere and I told you before you set off on your journey that in 10 minutes you're going to encounter a bad driver, They're going to be in a red car and they're going to cut you off in this location. And you knew it was going to happen, And then it happened, Would you be very angry about it? Would you go crazy over that? You've already known that it's part of the plan, Right? This can be contrasted with this idea that you go out, You take a journey, And what happens? You don't expect anyone to be a bad driver, And then suddenly you get cut off. You have expectations about the world that are cut. And it's those expectations versus reality that cause the frustration. Having a toddler and, You know, Seeing the anger that comes out, It's very often a kind of frustrated anger. You know, I wanted this thing to go this way and it didn't go that way. I wanted a drink out of the blue cup and I got the red cup. And it's this expectations clashing with the way things are. And a lack of control, You know, Like I can't fix it. Someone cuts us off in traffic. And we can't do anything about it, Right? It's like out of our control and then that can trigger our anger. For me, In the past, The way that my anger would work would be. . . Less expressive and more internal. So I would feel anger and then try to like put a lid on it and keep it in. And then that might leak out in subtle ways like passive aggressiveness or certain tones of voice that I might use or little statements or invitations of conflict without actually being fully rageful. Kind of a paradox of anger is that I'm going to get into in a minute why anger is quite a dangerous emotion and different from the other emotions. That's what the Stoics thought at least. But at the same time, We don't want to shame ourselves for feeling anger. You know, If you feel anger, You don't want to be like, Bad person, Bad person. We have to figure out a way to feel it and release it, Release is a good word, Without acting on it or without letting it get out of control. Yeah, So there's a lot of really interesting debate around anger. And I think every perspective has a lot of truth to it. You know, There's not like, This is right, This is wrong. Aristotle, Who is arguably one of the most influential philosophers, Thinkers in history. He was the student of Plato. Plato was the student of Socrates. Aristotle had a view about anger that anger is actually fine. Providing it is expressed in the right way. At the right time, In the right context and in the right amount. So if you can do all of those things with anger, You're fine. But how many people do you know can actually do that with anger? How many people do you know who can be angry in the right way and the right amount in the right context? It's a tricky thing because anger, By definition, Is not reasonable. You know, Like, And I'm talking about like the full expression of anger, Not like a little bit of annoyance. Now, Like when anger really gets going, It's not reasonable. That's the point of it. And then. . . On top of that, A lot of the time when we get angry, It feels justified. Have you ever felt really angry and had no reason for it? Like you just didn't know why you were angry and you didn't feel justified in it? There's this saying that I like to do with blame. Blame is anger looking for a target. You know, So sometimes we get angry and we want to keep that anger going and we start looking for targets. If you get someone really angry and maybe they believe that you've, I don't know, Misplaced their keys or something like that, And someone gets angry at you, And then you're like, Oh, I found the keys. They're here. Is that person going to suddenly snap into a good mood? And be like, Oh, Great, I'm happy now. Or are they going to say something like, Well, You should have told me. You should have known better. They're going to keep the anger going. And that's one of the issues with anger is we often want to seek reasons to be angry. It's almost like a snowball. When it starts building, It's hard to slow it down. It's got momentum. That's a great goal. See it. Be mindful of it. Take the lesson. And then thank you, Anger. You can go on your way now. One of the most influential Stoic philosophers is Seneca the Younger, And he wrote a book called On Anger. And the first thing I want to say about the Stoics, If you haven't heard of them, Is Stoicism is an ancient philosophical school of life founded around 2, 000 years ago. It's sort of like the thought of Socrates. Socrates was someone who questioned things and liked to get to the bottom of things, Expose contradictions in people's belief and question things like what is good, What is just, What is courage, And try to pick it apart. Stoicism is sort of like the evolution of that line of thinking. What does it mean to live a good life? What does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be happy? How should we think about death and status? Happiness and peace of mind, Like where does everything fit in? Where does pleasure and desire fit in? How do emotions work? The Stoics were trying to figure that out through reason and introspection and discussion. And Seneca was a Stoic and he wrote a book on anger. And the one thing I want to say about the Stoics is that they sometimes get painted as this group of people that didn't feel emotions. They were above it all and super resilient. And I want to dispel that myth. So Seneca. . . Lost his son, So he had a young son and his son died. And he definitely felt that trauma. So much so that he would write very long letters of consolation to other people that were grieving later in life. Seneca had a severe illness for about two years that brought him to the point of severe depression, To the point that it was life-threatening levels of depression. Because of an illness. I think it might have been tuberculosis or something like that. But yeah, This was quite a while ago, So they didn't have good treatment for it. And Seneca was also the tutor of a psychopath called Emperor Nero. I don't know if you've seen Game of Thrones, But Joffrey Baratheon is kind of like a, Similar to what Emperor Nero would have been like. Emperor Nero murdered his own mother and would go out into the streets and attack people in disguise, Just like a terrible, Terrible human being. And Seneca was his teacher, Right? So he had to try and teach this crazy psychopath who had a lot of power how to rule. And you can imagine what he saw and the incidents relating to anger and how destructive it was. And it turns out that Emperor Nero actually sentenced Seneca to death. That's how Seneca died, Because he just decided to kill off his tutor due to a false accusation of betrayal. So Seneca lived a very interesting life and he wrote this book on anger and he saw three main problems with anger. The first issue that Seneca had with anger is that it makes you a slave. When you're angry, You are no longer in control. You're not thinking like from your highest state. You are a slave to that emotion. Instead of you being in the driver's seat, Anger is driving you. And this is dangerous, Okay? So one of the things that Seneca said was, Surely every man will want to restrain any impulse towards anger when he realizes that it begins by inflicting harm, Firstly on himself, In the case of those who give full reign to anger and consider it proof of strength, Who think the opportunity for revenge belongs among the great blessings of great fortune. Do you not then want me to point out that man who is the prisoner of his own anger, So far from being powerful, Cannot even be called free? So sometimes when we feel angry, We feel powerful. I can intimidate people. I can make people retreat and feel on edge. When someone gets angry at a dinner party, Everyone goes quiet, And it's kind of awkward. Seneca would say that anger is not strong. Anger just exposes weakness. Anger exposes a weakness in you and that weakness makes you a slave. A slave to what exactly? Well. . . We have rich, Complicated lives. Being a child is very difficult, Very confusing. And we learn a bunch of different things to survive childhood and our teenage years, And we pick up different patterns. And it's possible that somewhere along the line, Anger became useful for us. It became a way of coping with things. Being so small in a world full of grownups, Where we have so little control, It's probably quite likely that we would have felt quite angry at times and frustrated that we couldn't make things the way that we wanted them to be made. And anger could be a carryover to that. And in a sense, There's something quite childish about a banana. The second reason is that anger is very difficult to slow down. When anger gets going, It starts to build in momentum. If you start to feel yourself a little bit sad, You know, And you have a conversation with a friend, That could usually, You know, Come on quite slowly, And you might be able to think your way out of it. Whereas anger isn't that kind of thing. You don't kind of slowly get angrier and angrier over six hours, Or over three days. Anger can come on in seconds, And if you observe your own anger, You'll notice that it's very physical. You tend to have thoughts like you're a victim, Us versus them, Revenge, Vengeance, Attack, Defend. These types of thoughts occupy the mind. And it puts us into like a fight or flight state, Like a survival state. And we can't think clearly enough to put it down. It just sort of gets away from us. I've been meditating for many years and I remember during the COVID times, I was in a supermarket and I got sort of sternly told off by someone who worked in the supermarket for walking in the wrong aisle of the supermarket, Even though there was no one there. And this person was being very rude to me. And I felt those sensations of anger come up. Yeah, Like a boundary was being crossed, Like I was being mistreated. As someone who's been meditating for years, I had to really be very mindful to slow that down. And it probably took about a minute or two to kind of reverse it. But without years of meditation and paying attention to my thoughts and feelings, That could have been a tricky one. That might have been something that would have been bothering me later on, Half an hour, An hour later. And when it gets activated, It kind of keeps looking for reasons. Sort of like voice in your head that keeps looping. And then. Contain this. So if you're really passionate about another human being, If you're in love, Typically. . . Your friends don't all feel that same passion, That love. If you're really excited about eating a piece of cake, That excitement is your own, Right? It doesn't get spread. You know, Maybe a little bit, But it's mostly your own. Anger can spread like wildfire. If you take someone who's charismatic and very angry, And there have been people like this in history, They can get like tens of thousands of people to also be extremely angry. And to cause distraction. Good people in mobs are not so good you know they kind of become one angry chaotic organism so anger is is dangerous not just to ourselves but the fact that we can be infected by it You know, If you have a friend who's really annoyed about something. When they're annoyed about it, There's a natural charisma that happens. So they've done some studies on what makes charisma. And one of the things that makes someone charismatic is that they feel strong emotions, But also don't feel the emotions of others around them. Okay, So they are not reacting to you as much, But they are really feeling strong emotions. And so what happens when you're in their presence is you start absorbing their feelings. And they kind of stay strong and resolute. So when you're angry, That's exactly what happens. When you're very angry, You don't feel everyone else's emotions. You don't care about anyone's emotions. You only care about one person's needs, And that is your own. And because you're feeling so much anger, You can start to affect other people with it. So those are the three main reasons. In terms of the antidote to anger, There's a lot. There's lots of different things that we can do. But the most important starting point for when it comes to overcoming anger is seeing it, Seeing it for what it is. If we have this perspective of, You know, Anger is, You know, It's most of the time okay, And now and again it's not so good, It's gonna be very tricky to manage it in the moment, You know? We need to make a commitment and say to ourselves, You know, I'm gonna make the decision to be done with anger, At least for the foreseeable future, To just, You know, Not allow myself to react. There's this parenting term that I like called yalibisy. And this is something encouraged to parents, You know, To create your house a no-yell zone. You take a vow of yalibisy. And there's something really cool about that. You're not just saying, Oh, Don't raise your voice much. You're actually saying, No, I take a vow that I will not yell. And this is something that I commit to. What would the ANGA version of that look like? It's also really good to recognize that anger has benefits too. Yeah. So there's this technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy, Also known as CBT and CBT was inspired by stoicism. And the technique is called the Paradoxical Cost-Benefit Analysis. All emotions are there to teach us a lesson, And it's our job to take the lesson, But providing we've got the lesson, We can then hang up the phone. You know, We can get the message, Hang up the phone, As Alan Watts said. When we have habits that we want to change, Let's say, You know, Oversleeping. We do the thing, So we oversleep, And then we wake up and we're like, Ah, Like, I wish I didn't oversleep. Now I've wasted some of my day. And we kind of list a couple of shallow reasons why oversleeping isn't very good. Procrastinating, You know, Like you procrastinate and then you don't get the thing done that you want to get done. And then you tell yourself, I wish I didn't procrastinate. If I didn't procrastinate, I could get these things done. I'm going to be a failure, Whatever. You tell yourself the story. It's also very important to recognize what the bad habit gives you. This is the paradoxical cost-benefit analysis. To get really, Really clear on the benefits of this habit. Good for you to have five to ten reasons of why oversleeping is actually really good for you. Like why it's beneficial, How it serves you. And these could be obvious, Like I feel better rested or something like that. But it could also be subtle, You know, Like. . . Like it allows me to not stress about my responsibilities, Something like that. It distracts me from the bigger problems in my life. Like the subtle things that this habit gives you. Getting really clear on that. And then when we start to see how this thing is serving us, You know, And how ultimately we're all kind of trying our best to be happy and to avoid suffering, But maybe like not in the most constructive ways. When we see our own attempt, That's when we have the clarity and the ability to change it. So yeah, Getting really clear on all the benefits of any emotion. So I used to suffer with anxiety a lot. And the thing that really started to shift it for me is when I started to see anxiety as a friend. It's not an enemy. It's there to help me, Right? Anxiety is this amazing, Complicated survival mechanism. Without it, We wouldn't be here at all. Anxiety keeps us safe. Anxiety is a protector. It's like an inner guardian angel. It's not a toxic mind state that needs to be killed. It's a voice trying to protect us. And when you view it from that perspective, Now you can actually start working with it instead of fighting against it. And the same can be applied to anger as well. Is anger is there for a reason? Do not think that you're a bad person if you feel it, Or you shouldn't feel it, Or that you're not spiritual if you feel anger, Anything like that. Anger is there for a reason. But ultimately, The goal is to be able to see it, Take the lesson, And then move on. So one of the goals, The flip sides to anger and any kind of negative emotion is, Well, Okay, We have this goal of not expressing destructive anger. We might have this goal of having, You know, Like reducing anxiety and negative moods. But that's almost like a minus to positive goal. Like, I don't want to feel bad kind of goal. It's good to punch through the target. So in martial arts, You have this idea of you can either punch the target or punch through the target. If you aim to punch through the target, You're going to have a lot more force in your strike. This is called follow-through in mechanics. The same thing can be applied to golf. If you just stopped the golf swing at the ball, The ball wouldn't go very far. You've got to go through the ball. So deciding to not feel angry is stopping at the ball. We need another goal to take us through it. And that goal, Recommended by the Stoics, Would be to make tranquility. One of our highest priorities. So, If I ask you, You know, What are you striving for in life? You might say, Well, I want to have financial freedom, Good relationships, Better health, All of these things. Great, You know, Do those things. Tranquility should also be there. Because if you're trying to do those things and tranquility is not coming along for the ride, You end up being that kind of stereotypical story of, I worked so hard to get this thing that I wanted, And I burned out in the process. Yeah, Or I decided to be successful at this thing and then I realized I was miserable when I got there. Epic Titus, Who wrote the Enchiridion, Translated as the Handbook. Was a slave turned stoic philosopher and teacher. And he recommended whenever we are planning to do something, Let's just say you wake up and you plan to go grocery shopping, You wake up, You plan to go meet a friend, You wake up, You go to work, Whatever it is, You should always have two goals in mind. The first goal is the thing itself, Right? Like where are you going? What are you going to be doing? The second goal is, While I'm doing this, I want to maintain peace of mind. I want to maintain tranquility. And you always keep that in mind, Okay? So when it comes to anger, You're out and about, You're driving down the motorway, A car cuts you up, You feel that anger, And you're like, Hang on a second. I don't just have the goal of getting to my destination, I have the goal of maintaining tranquility. If I lose that goal, I've lost. And so life becomes a sort of a, Like a bit of a game. How can I still do what I need to do while maintaining peace of mind? A perspective that I found very useful is putting a value on this idea of peace of mind. If I said to you, How much is your peace of mind worth? Imagine how your mind and your heart is in chaos. Feels like a war zone. And you were stuck there, How much would peace of mind be worth to you? A number on it. Like $10? No, It would probably be like way more than that. You probably give everything for peace of mind. And yet. . . If we spill a cup of coffee, Five dollars say, We let our peace of mind go. So we've essentially sacrificed our peace of mind for $5. Well, In a different context, That would have been priceless. So it doesn't make sense. So another stoic technique is to ask yourself a simple question, Is this worth sacrificing my peace of mind over? If the answer is yeah, Then do it. Get all worked up about it. But usually the answer will be no. I tell a story. It's a simple one. I was. . . Doing a long day of parenting, And I had a break, And then I went to go get a coffee. I bought like a cappuccino, Put it in my car, And the lid, As I went to pick it up, Came off, And the coffee spilled all over my legs, The seat, The floor. It was still hot, And I looked down at it, And I was like, You know, Covered in it. And I just, I just paused, And I just asked that question, Is this worth sacrificing my peace of mind over? And I just was like, No, It's absolutely not. And I'm not going to allow that to mess with my peace of mind. I'm okay. I'd rather have peace of mind and coffee all over me than to have no coffee over me and to not have peace of mind. And that simple question can bring us out of it. And I later found out when I gave that example. A friend of mine, Who I didn't know at the time, But he listened to one of my talks. He had to be charged $2, 000 for a rental car damage that he didn't actually do himself. And he remembered that podcast where I talked about this and he applied the same question. And guess what? $2, 000. Was not worth his peace of mind either. And he was able to kind of pull himself out of that too. Now, I'm not saying that he didn't feel any kind of frustration over it. We're all human. We need to give ourselves to be human. We're not trying to be perfect here. But even if that perspective helps 20%, 30%, It's still very valuable. So I don't want to make out that it has to be either perfect or not. If it helps, Use it. Now, In terms of some practical strategies that you can start using to manage anger, A good way to approach this would be to look at internal versus external. Okay, So you could think of it as lifestyle versus your body and mind. If you were in a very well calibrated state of health, Right, You had plenty of sleep and, You know, Clear thoughts, Good nutrition, Like everything was physiologically working well with you. And then I just decided to play very loud music all day and interrupt you all day from doing what you wanted to do, You'd probably get angry, Right? Like it would probably frustrate you. So there's an external element to anger as well as internal. And it's tricky because if you became very well developed like the Dalai Lama or the Buddha, You might get to a point where the external doesn't really affect you that much. But for the most part, There's this kind of synergy and relationship between the two. So let's start with the external world. What do you think you could do in the external world in your lifestyle that would make the emotion of anger less destructive, Less prevalent? Yeah, There's a physiological element that comes with noise too. And I feel this, If I haven't slept very much and my son is being very loud, It's like a physiological thing. It's almost like my nervous system is being overstressed by it. It's not just, Oh, That's just noise, It's nothing. We are biological creatures, We are going to respond to stimuli. And overstimulation is gonna have an effect. In one way or another. One I've already mentioned, It's so simple, Is sleep. Sleep is an obvious one. The quote that I like I heard from Matt Walker who wrote, Why we sleep is the bridge between Despair and hope is a good night's sleep and the argument he makes is that sleep is kind of a form of biological evolutionary therapy where our emotions get processed in the same way they would in psychotherapy. So that can be very good. If you're under-slapped, Are you more likely or less likely to be reactive? It's so obvious, But it's still worth repeating. If you're not sleeping well, Try and sleep well. That's a basic one for you. Absolutely, Yeah. Journaling is. . . Yeah, I don't know like it's so powerful. I'm a bit worried that people dismiss journaling as, You know, Just like this, Like, Unimportant basic self-care practice. But what you've got to understand about journaling is that. . . Your ability to journal. Your ability to journal, If you think about it, Is not an innate skill that we all have as human beings. To be able to journal, You had to first figure out how to understand words, Language, How to transcribe them, The alphabet, Handwriting. Or whatever you write in. So writing and being able to capture your thoughts is a psychotechnology. I'm just breath work. Is phenomenal, Yeah. Have you heard of the physiological psi? This is something that Andrew Huberman has talked a lot about. It's one of the best breathwork techniques for rapid stress reduction. I'm a big fan of lots of different breathing techniques, But the physiological size, You take two inhales and an exhale. So you take a full inhale, And then another inhale at the end of that, And then an exhale. So. . . And then an extended exhale. And the reason for this is because when you get stressed out, All of the carbon dioxide builds up in your system and the kind of sacs in your lungs deflate. So when you do the double inhale, It reinflates them and flushes the CO2 out of your system and reduces stress. But you can find videos on that. Exercise, Absolutely huge. Yeah, These are really big ones. Ancient Stoics had this technique called premeditation of adversity or premeditatio malorum. And they recognize that when things surprise us, It, It like hits us twice as hard. You know, Like imagine you're about to have like a difficult conversation with someone and they've already dropped lots of hints that it's going to go a certain way versus you're going through life and you sit down and have a conversation and then you get this news and it just knocks you over because you weren't braced for the impact. Premeditation is a technique where you just expect certain things to not go according to plan. You kind of visualize them and then you practice overcoming them in your own mind. So I'm probably going to encounter a situation that's going to make me angry. That's going to make me want to explode. I don't know what that is, But I'm aware that that's a strong possibility. What could it be? And you list some of the classic examples that it could be. And then you say, Well, My goal for today is when this setback happens, It might not, But if it does happen, I know it's going to be coming and I'm going to be ready for it. And sort of take away that surprise element, That should help. In how you are feeling throughout the day and especially as situations start to arise. Yeah. Yeah, So these are some really good suggestions here, And every one of them I like. One thing that nobody's mentioned is choosing who you spend time with. So this is really subtle, But you might have noticed, Just like I said, Anger is contagious, That some people in your life are more likely to bring out the angry side in you or trigger you more than others. You may have people in your life that you find very easy to be around. Peaceful, Relaxed, No conflict, No drama. And then you have other people and it seems like you can't even get through a conversation without feeling some kind of accusation or blame or some kind of weird distortion that you have to work through. You're almost like stepping over landmines in a conversation. It can be really difficult to not walk on one. Given the choice, Who should we be spending our time with? And this is actually something to consider because a lot of the time we just accept our social situation. These are my family, Like this, These are my friends, These are my co workers. But I would challenge you on that and say, Well, If you could design your own social circle to maximize our goal of tranquility, What would you change? Who would you spend less time with? Who would you spend more time with? As we do not know how to endure injury, Let us take pains not to receive any. We should live with a very calm and compliant person, One not at all given to worry or peevishness. We adopt our habits from our associates, And as certain bodily diseases spread to others from contact, So the mind passes on its faults to those nearest. The drunkard draws his fellow drinkers into a love of neat wine. Shameless company. And yeah, He's just pointing out the fact that if you're around someone who is hot-tempered and isn't very calm themselves, They're more likely to bring that out in you. So. . . I've done, The only thing I can think of there is I've done similar exercises in yoga practice. But yeah, You're kind of, You're using your body, Right? Like, And kind of integrating your body into the practice, Which is, I wouldn't say that this is always the case, But it's definitely a useful model to work with, Is that the things that trigger us are pointing us towards things that we haven't healed from in our past. You know, So let's just say that maybe not, You know, It's just an idea to contemplate. Another thing is to give yourself permission to, And when it happens, To treat yourself with more compassion. You know, How kind are you being to yourself when you get angry at school? Are you kind of saying, Like, Are you treating yourself like a friend? That's, I guess, My question for you. If a coworker came to you and they were like, Oh, I'm really struggling today, I'm getting super angry about this or that, Do you treat yourself in the way that you would treat them? You know, Because we have a double standard, A lot of us have this double standard, Where we often abuse ourselves, To be honest. Dr. Aziz Ghazipoura calls this the bizarre normal. If we could all hear what was in each other's heads, We'd be hearing a lot of self-criticism and self-attacks. Perfectionism and realistic expectations. It's like, Well, What happens when you break those expectations? Is there some level of conditional self-worth there? If I don't live up to these expectations, I'm not as worthy. And obviously that's probably not a healthy fuel source. Being driven by fear, Conditional worthiness, Versus being driven by joy and mastery and purpose and offering value to the world. Yeah, I would say experiment. Do a 30-day experiment where you just let yourself be more human, You know, And be kinder to yourself. Show yourself tolerance. Coach yourself. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for looking after. You see sometimes, You know, With parenting, You might have a hard day. And you might feel like. . . You're all alone, And what you're going through, No one else is going through, And you need to be perfect, And you're not perfect, And then you go and speak to other parents, Or even like parent experts, And they're like, No, This is actually part of the process, This is completely normal. And just recognizing that, You know, That this is the human condition, This is kind of normal, There's a lot of consolation in that. Yeah, So it kind of, It relaxes those expectations. So that's something to keep working with. One thing that I would recommend if you haven't thought about it in this way before, Maybe you have, Is to treat that inner critic that a lot of us have as a angry toddler that just wants to be heard. So if you have an angry toddler and they're having a tantrum and a meltdown, And you just say to them like, Shush, Don't want to hear it. Is that going to make them be quieter or louder? You know, Like, What would you suggest? If you have an angry toddler that's like you're stupid get away from me you can't do this and you're just like You know, Be quiet, Be quiet. Like, And you could try to suppress the toddler. Is that going to work? No, What we've got to do is be curious, Open to it. So you're holding yourself to these unrealistic expectations, Like, Oh, Interesting. Why are you doing that? And like, Have that conversation with yourself. You know, I'm curious what you think is going to happen if you aren't perfect. I'm actually curious why you're afraid of that. And you have that conversation with yourself and you'd be very curious about your emotions and what needs to come up and what needs to be said. And then you problem solve and you regroup and you try to work with it. This also comes up with people when they do creative work a lot. There are lots of creative, Intelligent people that have ambitions. And they don't actually do anything. You know, How many people want to start a podcast? How many people want to? Start a blog or create a business, Write a novel, And yet we don't. We don't do any of that. And a big part of it is that resistance, That fear that's holding us back. It's almost like you can't actually do this. You're not good enough. As soon as you start writing, You're going to see how much you suck. What we need to do is have a conversation with that part of ourselves. Like, Hey, I'm curious, What makes you so afraid? What do you think's gonna happen? Everyone's gonna look at you and read what you've written and think that you can't write. You know, That might be true, But at least I'll be more of a writer by doing it. Let's make a deal. How about I just write one page and we'll reassess then? Okay, Sure, That sounds good. And then there you have it, You've problem solved with this kind of inner child version of you. You haven't tried to cut it out or suppress it. Your inner child is feeling better lately, But my inner teenager is feeling a lot of frustration and anger lately. The tantrums have been coming up more from that teenage part of me. Yeah well it's interesting also you know maybe we can all learn from it but you described yourself as a good girl when you were in school And if you're familiar with the big five personality traits, One of them is agreeableness. And I score quite high on agreeableness. And if you describe yourself as a good girl, I would presume you weren't super disagreeable. So I would use that as some evidence that perhaps you were on the agreeable side of the spectrum. And agreeableness is nice because it makes you easy to talk to and can help you kind of have this warm energy and you kind of go along with things and you look for things that you agree with rather than disagree with. You know, If you come to me with something you're excited about, I'm not going to shut you down. I'm not going to tell you why I think you're wrong. I'm going to look for something in what you're saying that I also like and kind of have a conversation from that perspective. But there's a catch, And there's always a catch, Like there's no such thing as a free lunch with personality, Everything has a pro and a con. And one of the cons of agreeableness. . . Is that you often don't speak up enough. You often hold back those little frustrations, And you don't speak out when you have these little crosses to your boundaries. And what can happen is that can build, And that can turn into repressed anger, And then resentment, Bitterness, And then you might explode. And that's what can happen with agreeable people. They're like super nice and agreeable until they're not, They are like very. . . Like you know very full of rage and they can have tantrums. People that are more disagreeable they they're almost like always just constantly getting that off their chest you know like hey i didn't like that you were late hey this upset me you know they're just constantly doing that so they don't need those big explosions so i don't know if that resonates with you but That's something that I've recognized when it comes to agreeableness. There's different types of meditation for different purposes. You could say that some of them are designed to help you change the content of your thoughts. A lot of the Stoic meditations are kind of perspective changes. You know, You think like the peace of mind one, You tipped coffee, Is that worth your peace of mind? You're changing the content of your thoughts and reframing it. Some meditations are designed to help you learn a skill like matter meditation and compassion based meditation. You're actually training your body, Heart, Mind, Nervous system to be able to tap into compassion more easily. You're training that muscle. Which is incredible for overcoming anger, Of course. You know, Someone who's very developed in compassion towards themselves and others is gonna be able to navigate anger more skillfully. You also have concentration based meditation. And I suppose you could say that any type of meditation is going to be improving your concentration, If you're paying attention. But there are also specific types of meditation that you can do to build concentration. You could see this as a shamatha practice, And this would be, You know, You pay attention to the breath, Maybe at the tip of the nose, You pay very close attention to when the breath starts, When it ends, And then every time your mind wanders, You come back to the breath, And then you kind of build up. So initially, You forget the breath, Then you start mind-wandering and then you wake up right it's been like minutes and then you don't mind wander anymore, But you just occasionally forget the breath short for short periods and Then you can work up to a point where you get distracted for like seconds at a time And then you work up to the scale of trying to notice the distractions before they distract you so like the steering of a thought Before it becomes a full-fledged distraction and there's all these different levels to concentration. So yeah, There's a book called The Mind Illuminated by Kula Dasa, Also known as John Yates, Which gives you the 10 stages of attentional development, Which I really recommend. There's also a book, The Attention Revolution by Alan B. Wallace, Which is also all about concentration. And Even if that's not your primary practice in meditation, It could still be useful to maybe end your meditation with a few minutes of that or start it with a few minutes of that. Because when you become more concentrated, You can see the triggers of your anger before they start getting out of hand. And that's one of the issues with anger, As I've mentioned, Is that when it gets going, It becomes hard for any of us to slow it down. But if we can catch it just as it's coming, Like, Oh, I feel like I'm about to go chase that bone of anger. I'm going to go do it, But hang on a second. It might actually be a fake bone. You know, So I'm going to stop. And mindfulness and concentration can really help seeing that process and slowing it down. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, That can be a difficult experience. And I've seen this with different people that I work with that are agreeable, And then they start learning to become not disagreeable, But just more authentic, Maybe more assertive, Putting up stronger boundaries. People can have an initial reaction to that, Which is almost designed to maintain a status quo. And people will adjust. There'll be an adjustment period, And your mental health will be a lot better for it. Going even though it might be difficult at the moment. Yeah, That's a really powerful practice. You hear that a lot with meditation, You know, Like you only need to be mindful for a few seconds throughout the day. And then part of me at least is like, Yeah, But you know, I want to get into that deep meditation state, But then the more I've actually practiced those seconds throughout the day, The more I see the value in it. And the meditation teacher, Andy Pudicombe, He describes it as the dot to dot day when it comes to mindfulness. You know, The dot-to-dot drawing things you can do, You connect the dots. Those mindful moments are the dots on the paper and they just help you connect mindfulness across the day. I really like that way of thinking about it. Mindfulness can have a momentum if you just punctuate it. Yeah, That bone method, You know, Chasing, Chasing the bone, Like, Is it a real bone or a pretend bone? Like a dog typically doesn't know the difference and doesn't care. But as beings with reason and the ability to contemplate and pause, It's worth it to actually stop and ask, You know, Is this actually a real bone? And if it's not, Why would I want to chase it? And I totally agree that behind anger is very often fear. I'm a big fan of martial arts and I follow different professional fighting athletes and they will often say later on in their life when they write a biography that they were terrified a lot of the time you know and a lot of it was their bravado and were acting all tough and aggressive but beneath that there was like some scared you know child really that sort of was using it as a defense mechanism you know and that makes a lot of sense anger is often covered up by by fear that's something that i've been discovering in the parenting guides that i've been discovering Okay, What have I mentioned? So the first book that I mentioned was On Anger by Seneca. That's available free online. It's like, You can obviously buy like a book version of it, But you could also read the whole thing online. I also mentioned The Mind Illuminated by Kula Dasa, Which is, I see it as like the meditation bible for when it comes to the basic mindfulness based meditation practice. And The Attention Revolution by Alan B. Wallace. A very experienced meditator, It's a great book. Another book, The book that I got the bone analogy from was Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg. That's one of my favorite Buddhist books, Which I think is just really beautiful. Read it a few times. Certain books you read for knowledge, And then other books you read to kind of get on that frequency. It's almost like you're just tapping into that sort of source. Yeah, The nine steps. So the mind illuminated is where you have the 10, And steps of attentional development. A big cause of anger, You might have noticed, Is other people. If I ask you about some of the best experiences in your life, Your peak experiences, My guess is that they would include other people, A lot of them at least. And then if I ask you what caused you the most anger and stress in your life, I'm also presuming that it would be other people. We can definitely get triggered when. . . You know, The milk bottle. Smashes or something like that, You know, We can't find our car keys. Yeah, We can get angry with that. But it's usually with other people, You know, How we were treated, How someone spoke to us, Did we get betrayed by someone, Was someone being rude to us, Those types of things can trigger our anger. And one reflection from Seneca, Which I always think about, When do you hear this? It's difficult to unhear. And what he encourages us to do is to see ourselves in the offender. So if someone makes you angry, Ask yourself, Have I ever acted in a similar way? And when I acted in this way, Did I give myself as much of a hard time as I'm giving this other person? Because most of the time, We've done the things. At least, Maybe not the exact thing, But roughly speaking, We've done the things that other people do to us to make us angry. But when they do it, It's like. . . I'm such a victim, How dare they, This is outrageous. When we do it, We have all the excuses for it. We feel very justified. Seneca says, No one says to himself, I myself have done or could have done the thing that is making me angry now. No one considers the intention of the person who performs the action, But just the action itself. And yet it is to this person that we should turn our attention. And the question, Whether they acted intentionally or by accident, Under compulsion or mistakenly, Prompted by hatred or by reward, To please himself or to oblige another. We got to ask how old they are, Their status, And, You know, Dig into it, Right? And we really do that. We're just like, This is outrageous. This is wrong. End of the story. When we do something, We have all the reasons in the world. Well, I had a difficult week. I wasn't feeling so good. You know, I wasn't fully developed when that happened. We have all the reasons. Let's give us, You know, The people that are making us angry the same level of tolerance and try to see ourselves in them. We are all more similar than we are different. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. And. You know, One thing that was quite startling for me to reflect on was this realization that anger can be quite drug-like, It can be quite addictive. If you think of someone who maybe things are not going so well, They don't feel a sense of control over their life, Over their destiny. Maybe they feel social anxiety. You know, Maybe they feel like people walk all over them, Right? Things are just not going well. But then when they get angry, All of that changes. You know, When they get really angry. They don't care what people think. They can speak loudly and shout from the rooftops. Everyone gives them attention. It can kind of pump you up. It can give people a reputation. In certain areas, If you're known as the angry one, The loose cannon, The one with the temper, That can give you a sense of power in that environment. You know, Like, Oh, If, You know, If something goes wrong, I'll bring my kind of very angry friend to come and talk to you. And I don't know, The truth is that while anger is very destructive, For some people, They don't want to give it up. And that's part of the problem with it. People make an identity out of it. An interesting technique or process that Seneca recommended and Seneca recommended that we keep a journal or a log full of case studies about examples of anger. So detailed records of people that let their temper get the better of them and case studies of people who didn't let their anger get the better of them. And by collecting these case studies, You become almost like an anger or psychology historian. And they could be people from your own life, People that you've seen in the media, Yourself, Your own biography. But imagine you were to write a book on anger and you would have these stories and examples to draw from in discussing it. That would really help you because then when you feel that temptation to lash out or to be angry, You have 10, 20, 30 examples in your mind that you can clearly see where someone got angry and it went terribly wrong. And you also have examples of role models who had water thrown over them or got slapped or something, You know, Something that was, You know, By most standards would be considered to be a massive violation of boundaries. And they dealt with it in a way that didn't cause more damage or more suffering. So yeah, That's an interesting one. And it might sound like a lot of work, But. . . I don't know, I think it's worth trying, It's worth experimenting with, Just getting a digital or a physical journal and just record stories of things that come up for you. It doesn't have to be with anger, Even though this talk is about anger, It could be with anxiety or self-kindness, You know, A piece you could keep as sort of a self-kindness journal, And take a note of people that are harsh to themselves. You're going through life and noticing that someone's beating themselves up and you capture something that they say like, Oh, I'm such a stupid idiot. And you're like, Oh, I noticed that. And I can make a note of it. And then you go through life and you hear someone say, You know, Oh, I didn't, I didn't pass my driving test, But I'm really glad that I did the experience and I'm looking forward to giving it another go. " And you're like, Oh, Okay, This person's coaching themselves. They're being kind to themselves. I'm going to make a note of that. And that's a really good way that they spoke. And we can collect examples like this. So I'd recommend trying that. If you're already someone who journals, Then that shouldn't be too difficult. And I think I'll end with a final. . . Technique or idea and this is the idea of the philosophical journal and this can be applied to anything doesn't have to be anger and this was a staple stoic technique So the Stoics believed that external things like health, Wealth, Status, Possessions, Were not intrinsically good or bad. I know we use those labels like, Oh, I won a lot of money, That was good, Right? But those things in and of themselves are not intrinsically good or bad. If you don't have any wisdom at all, And you get a lot of money, You could very well make the argument that that would actually cause more problems than solve problems. If you were a very vile, Evil, Unkind person and you got a lot of money, Again, You could make the argument that that actually wouldn't be a net positive in the world. And vice versa, If you didn't have much money, You weren't super healthy, But you had a very well-developed character, You could turn any event into good fortune just by your perspective, Your ability to think about it clearly. You were very wise, You trusted the cosmic unfolding of events, You didn't resist life, You went with it. You learned to love what is because it is. You were mindful. You valued compassion, Courage, You did the right thing, You were honest, You had integrity. When you were on your deathbed, You could look back and go, I lived well, I made the right decisions. If you could get to that point. You could definitely make the case that that is way more valuable than anything external. And so the philosophical journal is designed to help you train in your character. And you just ask yourself every night before bed, You know, What? Didn't I do so well today? You know, Well, You know, Did I get angry? Did I react when I should have paused? Was I unclear about that? Did I bite my tongue when I should have spoken up? Did I speak up when I should have bitten my tongue? And you kind of ask yourself those questions. And then another one might be, What did I do really well today? What am I proud of? Was I disciplined? You know, Did I act in integrity? Did I tell the truth, Even though that might have been difficult to do? And then you make the commitment, Well, What am I going to do different tomorrow? What have I learned? And it's all about your character. This journal is not about you. Like a productivity journal. It's not about, You know, What could I do different in work to make more money? It's about what could I do different in my actions, My thoughts, To be better tomorrow. And over time, You know, It's not going to happen overnight, But over time if you consistently practice with the philosophical journal. You're going to change the way that you relate to yourself and the world, Similar to the way that you, When you lift weights, You grow muscle. It's gonna be a slow process. You're gonna gain one to two pounds a month of muscle, Let's say. The same with a philosophical journal. You're gonna five to seven percent each month. But you do it for three months, Six months, A year, You look back and you're like, Wow, I really made some massive changes by sticking with this. And there are obviously fine details around that. But I do believe that if you start practicing and thinking about some of these ideas, It should shift some of the things relating to anger and negative emotions in general, Anger, Craving, You will learn so much about yourself that tackling the other ones will be easier because of that. Yeah, And that's because stoicism is a practice. It's not like a, Oh, Let's just talk about complicated things and nitpick words and phrases. It's actually like, How do we live a good life? Let's talk about that. All right, Well, Thank you, Everyone. Hope you have a good rest of the day or night, Or you have a good sleep, Depending on where you are.

Reviews

Amazing talk. I learned so much that will be helpful. I even had a chuckle or two as I recognized some of my behaviors (good and some needing improvement). I highly recommend this talk and to listen when one has the time to focus and contemplate.