Today's Pearl Of Wisdom:

"Anger is never the only emotion, usually arriving as a reaction to the less obvious, but more important one."

Saying you are angry is a good start, but only gives part of the picture. You need to know more if you are invested in feeling something different. Anger is a backpack that is never empty. It always carries an emotion much more important inside, namely, fear, embarrassment, disrespect, neglect, disappointment, betrayal, helplessness, loss….oh child, the list goes on. But addressing anger without knowing that other feeling is sort of futile. Finding it is sometimes tricky, since anger sometimes acts as a bully to other thoughts and doesn’t let them in. It’s good to have a friend help you with the exercise I am going to share with you here, but doing an internal dialogue is sometimes necessary and equally as effective. So, you start out by saying, “I’m angry.” Then someone (or yourself) asks “Why?” You say, “Because she had 16 items in her grocery cart and it was a 10 items or less isle.” Friend: “What was the emotion that came BEFORE you got angry?” Response: "Disregard." (end dialogue) The information you have gathered here is useful, because if you are finding that each time you do this dialogue you always come up with “disregard” then there are 2 likely scenarios; you either come across ill-willed, selfish people constantly, or your “disregard” button is right there on the surface and can be pushed at the simplest bump. The issue then does not become about all these people who disregard you, but you going to this emotion as frequently as you do. However, if the emotion seems to be different each time, and you are getting angry often, then you are not digging deep enough down into that backpack. That's when a little more help couldn't hurt. Either way, you then have something to work with….and a real place to start.

Thanks for reading,
Patrick