26. Words Spoken To You In Anger Or Attack Are Empty, All Your Emotional Pain Is Self-inflicted

26. Words Spoken To You In Anger Or Attack Are Empty, All Your Emotional Pain Is Self-inflicted

Attacking words are just a knife put on the table. You must pick it up and stab yourself for those words to hurt you otherwise they are as powerless as if spoken in an unknown language.

You give the words power and thus you have the choice to let them go like a moment of passing gas that you laugh at as it happens. It may stink but it had to come out and it instantly floats away.

Your pain is born and lives in your own mind. You have the choice of how you interpret things so that they hurt you or have no effect. Simply put, you can laugh or cry or yell about anything; it is all a matter of how you interpret it.

You have the choice to be a mountain or a cloud. Imagine the different experience when a plane flies into you, both for you and the passengers.

Exercises

How Not To Get Angry

Every time someone is angry at you, remember that you do not know what happened to them this morning. Maybe they lost their job or had a car accident, or found they have a terrible illness. Remember that their words cannot hurt you any more than if they have very bad breath, and they are just like any animal in pain, venting at you. Now you can have compassion for them.

Babies Can’t Hold It In

Have you ever changed a baby’s diapers, and after a good cleanup and fresh diaper, within seconds the baby fills it again. What can you do, get angry or spank the baby? No, of course not. You accept that the baby has no self-control.

See anyone who is yelling at you in the same way, as someone who has no self control and just filled his diapers.

Refining Your Personality

List all your faults. This is not to look down on yourself, but rather to see where you should focus on refining. Although this sounds like a negative thing to do, for a person following Ethicalism, it is actually very encouraging because one discovers and corrects the cause of problems that one did not previously understand or was aware of.

Next, list all your parents faults and add those to the list of your own faults.

Thirdly, ask people who know you quite well what they think your flaws are.

Review this list every morning when you wake up as a reminder of what to watch for during the day, and every night before going to sleep to review your actions.

Aside from being very effective at helping you refine your character, this will develop humility and help you to be more compassionate and understanding of other people.

You will find people are not as irritating to you any more and that other people find you far more worthy of respect.