Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › Making it stick
Feeding here means whatever you actually rehearse: the conversation you replay at two in the morning, the reply you draft and delete, the grudge you keep polished. Every one of those is a rep for something. On an ordinary day it helps to ask which side you fed today.
Race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together (Quran 2:148). The instruction points towards something, which is easier to sustain than a rule about what not to do.
البقرة
وَلِكُلࣲّ وِجۡهَةٌ هُوَ مُوَلِّيهَاۖ فَٱسۡتَبِقُواْ ٱلۡخَيۡرَٰتِۚ أَيۡنَ مَا تَكُونُواْ يَأۡتِ بِكُمُ ٱللَّهُ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدِيرࣱ
Each community has its own direction to which it turns: race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together. God has power to do everything
Qur’an 2:148read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a trial of a six week group forgiveness programme, participants became more likely to forgive in new situations, not only in the original offence they arrived with. So a practised stance can travel beyond the case you practised it on. It was a small group intervention study, and forgiveness is only one part of what anger asks of a person.
Harris AH, Luskin F, Norman SB, Standard S, Bruning J, Evans S, Thoresen CE. (2006). Effects of a group forgiveness intervention on forgiveness, perceived stress, and trait-anger.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Whatever you practise most is what you get better at, resentment included.
One move to interrupt, one to settle. Open your hand, then take the slow breaths: the first buys you the gap and the second gives you something to do with it.
You are practising the pause, not giving anything up. Once you have paused, go ahead and drink the water.
You do not have to believe the calmer sentence yet. Say it anyway, on purpose, often, and belief tends to arrive behind the repetition rather than in front of it.