Nobody made you angry

We often hear people say that things , situations or other people make them angry.

Things like:

It makes me angry when
You make me angry if
He makes me angry because
When this happens it makes me angry

Think about this carefully and honestly – I expect many of you will agree that it describes your own personal situation.

The key concept here is the word made, or makes. People believing that the events/circumstances make them angry.

When we start to analyse the situation we realise that we are actually under the control of the situation or person that “makes “ us angry.

In other words, once the situation occurs we become angered. As we all know, in most cases anger doesn’t feel pleasant and it leads to all sorts of other problems and issues which are beyond the scope of this article.

So are we in control of ourselves or not? Are other people and their actions going to dictate how we feel?

As this concept of things/people making us angry is so entrenched in our psyche and society I am going to give an example and logical proof that we actually choose to be angry because of our own thoughts. This is one of the keys to getting a release from this way of thinking.

Imagine an airport departure lounge – a moderately stressful atmosphere, slightly tense perhaps. You’re sitting there waiting for your plane to board when a man and his young five-year-old son arrive. Unfortunately for you and the other hundred or so people crammed into the departure lounge, the young boy is very noisy and badly behaved. To make matters worse, he moves around the departure lounge making a right pest of himself to around 80% of the people there. He doesn’t go quite too far so as to prompt intervention from security or similar, but does succeed in being a real nuisance.

I think you will agree that in the above situation the majority of people would be feeling more tense and stressed before their flight. Now let us imagine that all of a sudden a team of five people in white coats appear holding clipboards and proceed to conduct a survey into the feelings of passengers before they fly. In such a situation I have no doubt that many people would mention their feelings of anger and when asked for more detail, would explain that “ the little boy over there made me angry”. This is a perfectly normal and common reaction – one which most people would experience.

Now, for a moment, let us imagine that the boy’s father then starts to make his rounds of all the people in the departure lounge apologising for his son’s behaviour, explaining that his son is not normally like that, and that the reason for it is because he is flying home after having come to the area due to his mother’s unexpected death whilst on holiday. The father also explains that his son is as a result very hard to control and that in the circumstances he himself is having his own difficulties and is less able to cope than normal.

Now let us imagine what must be going through the minds of all those tense stressed and angry people in the departure lounge. No doubt you will agree that the anger that was there will have now mostly disappeared, if not totally gone from the majority of the people present. Instead the anger will have been replaced by sadness and sorrow, and even empathy for the little boy and his father.

Why is this? Why has the anger disappeared? The simple reason, which is all we need anyway, is that all these angry people changed the way they thought about the situation.

In true reality, the little boy’s behaviour didn’t make them angry – they all got angry because of how they chose to think about the situation. The moment different thoughts entered their minds – in other words they found out the reason for the boy’s behaviour – they had an immediate change in their feelings.

Here is another way of looking at it – another question for you:

Are you a puppet subject to the whims of circumstance and other people? Can people “pull your chain” and make you angry? Or, are you really in control of yourself and at peace no matter what the circumstances. If not, I can assure you that it is possible. Understanding the keys illustrated in the above story is one of the first steps you can take.

Related posts:

1. How to Feel Energetic in Any Situation
2. How to Relieve Stress
3. Inspiring example of positive thinking
4. Are you a ‘victim’ of circumstance?
5. Weaving Optimism And Positive Thinking Into Success