Jerry Astrology

This is an expansion of the previous post on anger.

In the previous post on anger, I shared some ways for us to manage our anger. If you are someone who tends to get angry easily, and that anger often leads to actions that you regret, such as hurting relationships or damaging reputation, below are some steps and questions that may us better work with our anger:

1. Start with practicing self-awareness, i.e. noticing and being aware of your anger when it rises
2. What is my anger telling me? What boundaries are crossed, or which values are stepped on?
3. What is the end outcome that I want?
4. How can I channel my anger productively to achieve this outcome?

There’s another tip that I found very useful in helping me be be with my anger. It is from the book titled “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman. He describes this tip as “charitable line of thought”. In the realm of coaching, we sometimes call this “unconditional positive regard” or “most positive assumption”. Let me paraphrase Daniel Goleman’s example in the book to help us understand how this works.

Imagine you are driving on a busy road. Suddenly another driver cuts dangerously into your lane without any prior signals nor warnings. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon scenario for drivers, and it is easy to fly into rage as a result of the near-miss.

To avoid escalating the anger within us, we can ask ourselves, “what’s the most positive assumption we can make about this driver and his behaviour?” The answers you end up with could be, “the other driver may be a new and feeling very nervous and uncertain in this heavy traffic”, or “perhaps there is an emergency at home he has to deal with”. In a way, by having the most positive assumption for the other person, we are putting ourselves in his shoes and empathising with him. No sane person drives dangerously on the road. He must be in a some challenging situation that calls for it. How can I then be angry with him?

Now, in this particular context, is it important that our most positive assumption about the driver is true? No, because we can reap the benefits of this assumption without it being true – nipping our anger in the bud, avoiding road rage, removing the temptation to chase that driver down to give him a piece of our mind (which puts us in greater danger), and most importantly, returning to a state of emotional balance.

If we use a different set of language to look at this “most positive assumption” approach, it is about realising and understanding that not everything is about us. The barista that was rude to us while taking our orders? He is probably not out to get you specifically. He may be rude to everyone, or he may have been unfairly told off by his manager earlier in the day. It is not necessarily about us.

As the recipient of this rude treatment, you could say that we are simply at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Or from the perspective of astrology, we are simply experiencing our karma. And how we choose to respond after experiencing our karma is the key.

If we are not aware of our karma and lacking self-awareness, we may well get angry at the rude remark, yell back at the barista and end up perpetuating the karma around anger.

If instead, we are aware of both our karma and our rising anger, we can use this “most positive assumption” method and tell ourselves, “The barista might be having an awful day. Though he may be rude, I still got my coffee. Let’s get back to my seat”. No yelling nor drama involved, and most importantly, we are back at our state of emotional balance.

“Most positive assumption” is a very useful method that supports us in navigating not just anger, but other emotions as well, such as disgust. However, the very first step is still self-awareness. We need to be aware of our rising anger in order to catch ourselves and apply this method. If we are already overwhelmed by anger, it is much more difficult to retain the clarity of mind to apply it.

Being self-aware of our emotions is like a muscle. It takes practice. As we get better at it, we will find ourselves noticing the emotion earlier and earlier in the cycle. When we reached the point of noticing our emotion right at the moment it rises and still retain the clarity of mind, our possibilities are limitless.

Until then, let’s keep practicing, and be gentle with ourselves in the process.

ॐ 🙏

Reference: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman