Happiness and Anger

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger ~ Buddha

Today I want to write about anger, there are few things more destructive to your own personal happiness than anger. It’s easy to get angry and it’s an emotion that has, in limited instances, some usefulness. However it can easily become something that is overly expressed and have a very negative impact on your life. I’m reminded of a friend, a pretty mild-mannered guy, who terrified me the first time I ever got in his car with him. As we were driving along he was driving aggressively, screaming at other motorists and pounding on his dashboard. It seemed inevitable to me that his anger would someday lead to an altercation, an accident or even a stroke. Additionally, anger breeds anger and when someone screams at you your natural reaction is to scream back and this, is not good for anyone. This type of activity also creates isolation and leads to a lack of consideration and compassion for our fellow-man further adding to the complications and aggravations of our lives.

Turning to one of my favorite sources, here are a couple of quotes from the Dalai Lama, first on the personal anger and second on anger at a much larger level:

The first drawback of anger is that it destroys your inner peace; the second is that it distorts your view of reality. If you think about this and come to understand that anger is really unhelpful, that it is only destructive, you can begin to distance yourself from anger.

If each of us can learn to relate to each other more out of compassion, with a sense of connection to each other and a deep recognition of our common humanity, and more important, to teach this to our children, I believe that this can go a long way in reducing many of the conflicts and problems that we see today. ~ Dalai Lama

Hopefully friends your anger is not an issue, sure we all get angry occasionally, but hopefully it is not at a level where it impacts your life to any major degree. I think it would do us all good however to reduce the level of anger in our lives. I found a great piece from the Mayo Clinic that contains 10 tips to help you control your anger, it’s a great article, have a look and as always, have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

About Michael Kane

Michael Kane is a writer, photographer, educator, speaker, adventurer and a general sampler of life. His books on hiking and poetry are available in soft cover and Kindle on Amazon.

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