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Areas › Anger › Choosing your response
Discipline does real work. It takes the decision out of the moment, so you are not negotiating with yourself while your pulse is up. The risk is that a habit you never revisit quietly becomes another kind of autopilot, and autopilot is what had you shouting in the first place. Once a month is often enough to look at your routines and pick them up again on purpose.
They remain steadfast through their desire for the face of their Lord, and they repel evil with good (Quran 13:22). The practice is held together by what it is for, so it is worth remembering, now and then, what it is for.
الرعد
وَٱلَّذِينَ صَبَرُواْ ٱبۡتِغَآءَ وَجۡهِ رَبِّهِمۡ وَأَقَامُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَنفَقُواْ مِمَّا رَزَقۡنَٰهُمۡ سِرࣰّ ا وَعَلَانِيَةࣰ وَيَدۡرَءُونَ بِٱلۡحَسَنَةِ ٱلسَّيِّئَةَ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ لَهُمۡ عُقۡبَى ٱلدَّارِ
who remain steadfast through their desire for the face of their Lord; who keep up the prayer; who give secretly and openly from what We have provided for them; who repel evil with good. These will have the reward of the [true] home
Qur’an 13:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In experiments on if-then planning, deciding in advance what you would do in a specific situation reduced the pull of an established habitual response, though the benefit was smaller when the old habit was strong. So a plan helps, and it does not simply write over a well worn reaction. That is an argument for keeping your plans under review rather than setting them once and trusting them.
Webb TL, Sheeran P, Luszczynska A. (2009). Planning to break unwanted habits: habit strength moderates implementation intention effects on behaviour change.. The British journal of social psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A habit you have chosen again recently is one you can still adjust, whereas one running unattended just runs.
You can tell someone they have hurt you without your voice showing it. The message and the heat come apart, and it is usually the heat that stops the message being heard.
You cannot swap the temperament you were born with, but you can change what you do with it. A reactive person who has trained handles things better than a calm person who never had to.
Before you walk out, say three things: this is getting heated, I need a bit of space, I will be back and we will carry on. The sentence is the skill, not the walking.