Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Anger › The moment before you snap
This is the part that offers something to people whose sense of themselves rises and falls with how they were treated that day. If who you are is the watching rather than the passing content, then a bad hour, an insult, a mistake at work, none of it revises you. You can take that as far as you like philosophically. Practically it loosens the grip of needing everyone to give you your worth back.
Say, 'I seek refuge with the Lord of people' (Quran 114:1). The refuge is in the one who does not change, which is a steadier place to stand than the opinion of whoever is in front of you.
الناس
قُلۡ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلنَّاسِ
Say, ‘I seek refuge with the Lord of people
Qur’an 114:1read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Across four laboratory experiments, briefly writing about a core personal value restored self control in people whose willpower had just been taxed. Reconnecting with something that does not move seems to give people something back. These were short student studies of a specific writing task, so they hint at the value of a stable footing rather than settling anything about identity.
Schmeichel BJ, Vohs K. (2009). Self-affirmation and self-control: affirming core values counteracts ego depletion.. Journal of personality and social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Worth that does not depend on the last hour is much harder for anyone to take from you.
Decide now what you will say when it happens, while nothing is happening. A line chosen in the calm is worth more than any resolve you can summon mid row.
Writing down what happened puts a little distance between you and it. Later you are not inside the row any more, you are a person reading about one.
Most of us think there are two things to do with anger: hold it in or let it out. There is a third, which is to stop, stay still, and watch it without doing either.