Take back your control

1. The events of this world don't make you angry. Your "negative thoughts" create your
anger. Even when a genuinely negative event occurs, it is the meaning you attach to it
that determines your emotional response.
The idea that you are responsible for your anger is ultimately to your advantage
because it gives you the opportunity to achieve control and make a free choice about how
you want to feel. If it weren't for this, you would be helpless to control your emotions;
they would be irreversibly bound up with every external event of this world, most of which
are ultimately out of your control.
2. Most of the time your anger will not help you. It will immobilize you, and you will
become frozen in your hostility to no productive purpose. You will feel better if you place
your emphasis on the active search for creative solutions. What can you do to correct the
difficulty or at least reduce the chance that you'll get burned in the same way in the future?
This attitude will eliminate to a certain extent the helplessness and frustration that eat you
up when you feel you can't deal with a situation effectively.
If no solution is possible because the provocation is totally beyond your control,
you will only make yourself miserable with your resentment, so why not get rid of it? It's
difficult if not impossible to feel anger and joy simultaneously. If you thing your angry
feelings are especially precious and important, then think about one of the happiest
moments of your life. Now ask yourself, how many minutes of that period of peace or
jubilation would I be willing to trade in for feeling frustration and irritation instead?
3. The thoughts that generate anger more often than not will contain distortions.
Correcting these distortions will reduce your anger.
4. Ultimately your anger is caused by your belief that someone is acting unfairly or
some event is unjust. The intensity of the anger will increase in proportion to the severity
of the maliciousness perceived and if the act is seen as intentional.
5. If you learn to see the world through other people's eyes, you will often be
surprised to realize their actions are not unfair from their point of view. The unfairness in
these cases turns out to be an illusion that exists only in your mind! If you are willing to
let go of the unrealistic notion that your concepts of truth, justice, and fairness are shared
by everyone, much of your resentment and frustration will vanish.
6. Other people usually do not feel they deserve your punishment. Therefore, your
retaliation is unlikely to help you achieve any positive goals in your interactions with them.
Your rage will often just cause further deterioration and polarization, and will function as
a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if you temporarily get what you want, any short-term
gains from such hostile manipulation will often be more than counterbalanced by a longterm
resentment and retaliation from the people you are coercing. No one likes to be
controlled or forced. This is why a positive reward system works better.
7. A great deal of your anger involves your defense against loss of self-esteem when
people criticize you, disagree with you, or fail to behave as you want them to. Such anger
is always inappropriate because only your own negative distorted thoughts can cause you
to lose self-esteem When you blame the other guy for your feelings of worthlessness, you
are always fooling yourself.
8. Frustration results from unmet expectations. Since the event that disappointed you
was a part of "reality," it was "realistic." Thus, your frustration always results from your
unrealistic expectation. You have the right to try to influence reality to bring it more in
line with your expectations, but this is not always practical, especially when these
expectations represent ideals that don't correspond to everyone else's concept of human
nature. The simplest solution would be to change your expectations. For example, some
unrealistic expectations that lead to frustration include:

• a. If I want something (love, happiness, a promotion, etc.), I deserve
• it.
• b. If I work hard at something, I should be successful.
• c. Other people should try it measure up to my standards and believe
• in my concept of "fairness."
• d. I should be able to solve any problems quickly and easily.
• e. If I'm a good wife, my husband is bound to love me.
• f. People should think and act the way I do.
• g. If I'm nice to someone, they should reciprocate.