Sound familiar? If you want to manage anger,
only way of doing so is to listen to your self-talk. This doesn’t mean listening to yourself talk. It means listening to your SELF-TALK. It’s quite true that anger is created from within. No matter how much you say—“She made me mad!” “It makes me so mad when…”—the anger comes from YOU, not it or she.
Our thoughts about “it” or “she” is actually where anger comes from. And by changing our thinking we can change way we feel (for example, instead of angry or enraged, annoyed or irritated..)
Doesn’t it make sense, then, if anger is created from within that we have power from within to keep from getting angry? The answer is a definitive YES.
By adjusting how you think about a situation, to listen your self-talk, is how you keep yourself from getting mad—period.
How? By listening for demands. What are demands? They’re easy to spot. They tend to express themselves in words such as SHOULD, ought, must, have-to, need.
Depending upon context and situation, when these words or thoughts are used they will create anger.
Whether you use them on someone or someone is using them on you, a sense of anger, rage or mad evolves from these words/thoughts of demand when things don’t go your way.
There are numerous examples of how this is true, but here is a simple one that most everyone can relate to:
You’re driving in rush-hour traffic, late to get home. Another driver cuts you off, almost hitting you, so he can run a yellow light that actually is quite red by time he runs it—leaving you stopped at light and cursing driver as he speeds away.
