Life Is Too Short to Waste On anger

Step back for a moment and give yourself a break.

Marilyn Regan
Nov 3 · Unlisted
Photo by Emanuel Rincon Restrepo on Unsplash

Morning is the perfect time to absorb the stillness around you.

You open your eyes on a new day to quiet, potential, peace, and no distractions. It’s that space between waking and when life starts. And it’s perfect.

Then the kids wake-up, the dog needs to go out, and here comes trouble.

But it isn’t trouble. It’s just life, and it’s starting.

Life isn’t quiet, and it’s not meant to be. Things go wrong and don’t turn out the way we planned. We become angry and perhaps we have every right to be. But if we carry that emotion forward, things unravel more.

We’ve got to accept, move forward and leave the frustration behind.

To quote a paraphrase of an old Yiddish proverb by Woody Allen:

“We plan, God laughs.”

We’ve got to learn to laugh, too, or at least accept the situation for what it is. If we can do that and move forward, we’ll have a good chance of leaving it behind. For the time being anyway.

The broken pieces are all still there. They will rearrange themselves, fall back together and something else will take its place.


In the movie Happy Gilmore, before he’d pitch a colossal fit, his friends would tell him to, “Go to your happy place.”

He had to close his eyes and envision his happy little fantasy. If you’ve seen the movie, you know it was weird. But hey, it worked for him. It was a way to let things be and work with what was, not what he wanted.

Letting go is hard. It is an art. And with practice, it can release you from reexperiencing negative emotions. Anger can bring you down or you can bring it down.

Here’s a simple technique I use to deflate the fire a bit.

  • Count to 10
  • Distance yourself from electronic devices and social media. It’s only temporary, I promise.
  • Close your eyes and inhale, filling your belly with breath. Pull it up into your lungs. Feel your ribs spread. Now pull it up even further into your collar bones and feel them open.
  • Exhale slowly. Give your heart a minute to stop palpating.
  • Once you’re physically back, enjoy the feeling.
  • Now go to your happy place. Maybe you can go back to the peace of an early morning.
  • Sit with it for a couple of minutes.

The results aren’t as instantaneous as taking a pill. It takes practice. This will get you through the situation or at least give you time to walk away.

If you need help with anger, seek professional help.

There’s so much out there to throw us off if we don’t have a way to control our reactions we’re going to waste a lot of time being angry at things we can’t change.

And then end up being angry at ourselves.

Life is to short to waste it on anger.

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Marilyn Regan

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Marilyn is a writer, yogi, and spiritual medium. Her favorite people are animals, especially ones that meow. She loves the ocean and hates one-use plastic.

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