Today, something will set you off
Maybe someone will cut you off in traffic. Someone might be rude, your car could break down. Someone might call you a name.
Your instinct may be to yell and get angry. It’s natural.
But also absolutely useless. What does it accomplish?
Mark Twain famously said, “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
Anger hurts you more than anyone else. It clouds your judgement and leads to terrible decisions.
When you yell at someone are you getting closer to what you want?
More often than not it pushes you further away from your goal. It makes the situation worse. It sets you off on a downward spiral into chaos.
2000 years ago Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius observed, “how much more harmful are the consequences of anger…than the circumstances that aroused them in us.”
If we are serious about achieving our goals it makes sense to pause for a few seconds, take few deep breaths and postpone our response.
A few seconds is all it takes between exposing the worst version of ourselves and the best.
Anger is the response of the weak. You are better than that.
