Can you be angry and kind at the same time? The real question is how mature your anger is.
A man came into my home while the walls were being replaced and told me to move a van. I got stubborn. Later I sat with what my teacher Jun Po asks me. Has anybody ever made you angry? No. I chose it. I am angry because I care. Once you see that, you get to choose the response as well. Anger is not the problem. Immature anger is. Shouting about world hunger feeds nobody. Anger that moves something is worth having.
One thing to try: When anger arrives, name what you care about underneath it. Then act on that, not on the anger.
In this episode
(2:36) The Cornish unit and the walls coming off
(4:06) The man at the door who wanted the van moved
(5:02) Where I got stubborn
(6:45) Jun Po asks: has anybody ever made you angry
(7:33) No. I chose it, because I care
(8:46) The first three months of love, and what changes
(11:17) Good. Be angry. Now do something with it
(16:27) Do not get rid of your anger. Grow it up
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
Can you be angry and kind at the same time?
Yes, and the useful question underneath it is a different one. How mature is your anger?
The heart of it
Anger is not the problem. Immature anger is.
Nobody makes you angry. You choose it, and once you see that, you get to choose the rest as well.
Anger comes from fear, and fear comes from caring about something.
The Tao Te Ching has a line about how the best general enters the mind of his enemy. That is the whole difference in eight words.
Here is my example, and I do not come out of it perfectly. My house was having its walls replaced, so there were eight builders here and every door was open. A man from two doors up came into my kitchen and told me to move a van.
I asked why. He said it was in the way of his gate. It was about two feet over it.
He shouted. I stayed calm, partly because a room full of builders was watching and I am not certain I would have managed it alone. And I did get stubborn. I decided I was not moving it now precisely because he had come into my home shouting.
We moved it two hours later. He was not happy. We also did not fall out permanently with somebody who lives in the same road, which was worth more than winning.
Then there is the question my teacher asks, and he asks it three times because you never get it on the first.
Has anybody ever made you angry?
Jun Po Denis Kelly
By the third time you get there. No. I chose it. I am angry because I care.
Immature anger only wants to win. It stops listening, the shoulders come up, and the reasonable part of you goes offline.
Mature anger stays angry and pauses. It is still about something that matters. It just is not a war any more.
And it applies to the big things too. Be angry about hunger, homelessness and the gap between rich and poor. You should be. Shouting about it, ringing your mum about it and posting about it feeds nobody, and I am as guilty of the last one as anybody.
One small thing to try
Use the two lines when it rises.
I am angry because I care. I pause because I am wise.
Then wait for something to come up from lower down than your first response. Your default answer is already loaded. The honest one takes another second and a half.
And if you go too fast and get personal, apologise quickly. That is a mature move, not a defeat.
Questions people ask
Should I be trying to be less angry?
No. Some of the best things in the world exist because somebody was furious about an injustice and did something with it. Use it. Just do not let it use you.
What if the other person is plainly wrong?
They still care about something, even if it is only a parking space while you are angry about world hunger. I always think my anger is more worthy than anybody else's. So does everybody, about theirs.
What does a good argument look like?
You understand what they mean, they understand what you mean, and half an hour later you can have a coffee about it. Nobody had to lose for that to happen.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
anger · compassion · acceptance
Read the transcript
So how mature is your anger?
This is something I've been thinking about quite a lot recently
and about different emotions and about all our shame, guilt and
desires and happiness and blissfulness.
All these different things we have fear and anger.
How mature are they?
You know, I think we all develop them at a young age, but
they're not very mature.
So how can we grow it up?
And what does a mature anger look like compared to an immature
anger?
And that's what we're going to discuss on this podcast.
And just by embracing, knowing what it means to have a mature anger
will automatically seep into your life.
It will automatically change how you have arguments and how you
deal with your anger and how you can be slightly more persuasive
when arguments do occur.
Hey, I'm Stephen Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.
And it's here to give you a little more inner peace in life by
giving you a deeper and a different perspective of how things
work and how we work and how to live from a deeper, more meaningful
sense.
So talking about anger, the Tao Te Ching says, the best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general enters the mind of his enemy.
The best businessman serves the communal good.
The best leader follows the will of the people.
All of them embody the virtue of non competition.
Not that they don't love to compete, but they do it in a spirit
of play.
In this, they are like children and in the harmony of the
dao.
You know, if your arguments are in the spirit of play, that's
fine, but how often is this the case?
I remember we were having all of our walls replaced.
I live in what's called a Cornish unit.
And if you've never seen what a Cornish unit looks like, the bottom
half of it is basically concrete and the top half of it is
like slates.
And they were put up just after the war really quickly.
And it meant that the government could build lots of houses
and they were prefabbed in like a warehouse and then they were
just put up on site.
But the problem is they developed like a concrete cancer,
I believe it was called.
And the concrete started rotting and it started to become
very weak.
And it meant that these houses couldn't get mortgages.
And in order to get a mortgage, they had to basically replace
the outside of these walls.
Then, long story short, my parents sold the house to a housing
association so I could continue to live here.
And they had to replace the walls in order to for it to be mortgageable.
Now then in replacing the walls, this is becoming a really
Long story.
To get to a point, we had loads of builders around at one time.
There were seven or eight builders here, a couple of decorators,
and it was so busy, and it was during the summer, so the doors are
open.
And, you know, I like to talk to people.
So I was up there talking to the builders, probably shouldn't
have done.
I was probably distracting them from their work majorly.
But this guy come in from two doors up, and he come in at the door
and said, I want you to move the van.
And I said, why?
Because we got everybody here.
You know, there isn't loads of room in the road.
Give me a good reason.
Just move the van.
I said, no, well, just give me a good reason.
It's in the way of my gate.
And I said, well, you know, if you've got a good reason, we'll move
it in a couple of hours.
But in order to move it, we gotta move several cars.
So is it okay for just a couple of hours?
And it come to.
It was 2 foot over his gate, you know, 24 inches over his gate.
And he just.
He couldn't park exactly where he wanted to.
So he was in my kitchen shouting and shouting at me.
And I remained calm and the people around me and all that.
And I suppose I remained calm because the people around me were
watching me.
I don't know if I'd remain calm.
And I just said, look, we will move it in a couple of hours.
And I did become a little bit stubborn at this point.
I was like, no, I'm not moving it now because you're coming in my
home and you're shouting at me.
And I just remained calm and I let him talk.
And in the end, he left.
And we moved around a couple of hours later.
And a couple of people said to me, how did you remain calm?
I was like, I don't know.
I just did.
And here's the thing.
But just remaining calm solved that argument quite easily.
You know, he wasn't happy.
He went away, but it did not blow up into us falling out and having
to live in the same road and never speaking again.
And here's the thing, if you can just pause.
There's nothing wrong with being angry.
You should be angry.
There's children starving in the world.
There's people suffering.
There's wars going on.
There's corruption going on.
There's people that are homeless that don't need to be homeless.
You know, the difference between rich and poor is huge.
We should be angry.
There's nothing wrong with being angry.
Anger Is not the problem, but it's what we do with the anger that
is the problem.
It's what we do with it in the moment.
And the thing is, we're very often angry because we're taking
it personally.
And this is where it's really interesting, where the best general
enters the mind of his enemy instead of from your side of it,
instead of looking at it as well.
How dare you attack me here?
Get in their mind.
See what they're saying.
What is their point?
Jumpo.
One of my teachers says to me, has anybody ever made you angry?
It's like, well, yeah.
Really?
Have they?
And I'm like, yeah, people have pissed me right off.
He goes and he leans in and he asked me again, has anybody made
you angry?
And I'm like, yes.
He said, okay, let me ask you again.
And he slows down and he says, has anybody ever made you angry?
And then suddenly, well, no, I've chose to be angry.
I'm angry because I care.
They didn't make me angry.
I'm choosing my reaction.
I'm choosing my response.
And in doing that, I can choose how to respond to my anger.
It's my anger, not theirs.
They're angry.
They're having to go at me for something.
That's their anger.
Me, you know, whatever's arising in me is my anger.
Then I might be angry because they're not listening to me.
I might be angry because they don't have a point and they're wrong.
But again, it's my anger.
And if we stop and realize that, both of us care.
We may not care about the same thing, but both of us care.
The problem is, normally when we get angry, we stop listening.
All of our other senses shut down.
Our reasonable mind switches off and our chimp mind.
Our shoulders go up and we arch ourselves and we're ready for
a battle.
You know how I'm gonna win this argument?
It's just like when you get into a relationship at first.
In the first three months, you can call them a name.
And it's funny, you can say all these things and you can have
these bantering arguments, and nobody takes it personally because
you're so high on endorphins of new love that it's okay.
You know, they don't mean it.
Give it four or five months in.
Oh, different story.
The endorphins are gone then, and they can say the slightest thing.
Did you leave the cup on the side?
What?
Are you accusing me of something?
It's like, well, no, I'm not accusing you but did you leave the
cup there?
Well, I might have done.
Are you saying I'm lazy?
It's like, no, I'm just fed up with picking up the cup and I just
asked if it is you.
You know, you know the scenario.
But how?
What does mature anger look like?
Mature anger takes a step back.
It's still angry.
It still realizes that there's something here that you deeply care
about, but it pauses and it waits upon the intuition to come
up from further down below.
Instead of the mind jumping to a response, jumping to, I gotta win
this.
You know, this is a war.
It takes the war out of it.
It's no longer a war.
It's just, well, we both care about something.
It may not be the same thing.
Perhaps if I listen to them and then they'll listen to me.
So you could go through the phrase, you know, I'm angry because
I care and I pause because I am wise, I'm angry because I care
and I pause because I'm wise.
And then allow a deeper, intuitive self a genuine, honest
answer rather than just jump into the same old triad of abuse
or shouting or defensive mechanisms.
Whatever you normally.
Your default jumping to is the mature one doesn't jump to that.
The mature one understands, it gets in the.
Enters the mind of the enemy.
You know, the best businessman serves the communal good.
So you're looking at the good for both of you.
Whoever you're angry with, or whatever you're angry with, you could
be angry with people that are dumping rubbish on the beach.
Good.
I'm glad you're angry about it.
You bloody well should be.
It's annoying us humans know better, but running around screaming
about it, shouting about it, phoning your mum and moaning about
it doesn't do anything.
We think it makes us feel a little bit better.
And the more we moan about it.
Putting on the Facebook post, hey, and I'm guilty of this one.
You know, if anybody's my friend on Facebook, you know, I do
this, you know, one of my default jump to, well, I'll share
it on Facebook.
I'll find my common tribe that are angry about this same thing too.
But if you question why you're doing it, then you don't end up making
things worse.
You know, if you do end up talking very quickly and making accusations
or you get personal, be wise and apologize quickly.
As soon as you realize you jumped into that mode, apologize.
You know, the most perfect argument is when you can understand
what they're saying.
You end up being able to help them to understand what you're saying,
and you can immediately have a laugh over a cup of coffee after
and you can see yourself in the other person, that if you were
them, you'd be angry just like them.
And it may not be the same thing as you that you're angry about.
For them, it may be the parking space.
For you, it may be world hunger.
You know, we all have our different priorities.
I'm not here to judge someone else's priority, trust me.
I just think what I'm angry about is bigger and better than theirs.
Just that's the reality.
I always believe my anger is more worthy than somebody else's
anger.
Of course I do.
It's mine.
I own it.
Just like most of the stuff I own, I think is better than.
You know, that's normal.
That's part of who we are.
That's part of the small mind, human, small mind, ego.
But there's an intuitive wisdom that runs way deeper inside
of you that is honest and genuine.
And if, when we're angry, we can just pause, recognize I'm angry
because I care, and pause because you're, you have a new skillful
way, you have a new wise way of doing things.
Just by doing that, we don't throw more fuel on the fire.
We don't make things worse.
We end up solving more problems than we end up creating.
Very often when we're angry, we create more problems now, especially
the masculine side of the human race.
Human race.
It's like as if we're getting somewhere, we ain't getting nowhere.
But that's a different story.
That's a whole different podcast.
But there's nearly always a solution.
You know, if you just look deep down and be honest and genuine
and explain why you're angry.
You know, anger normally comes from fear.
Fear comes from caring about something deeply.
You know, it all comes back to the caring.
You know, we've all had different life, different experiences,
and immature anger lashes out, doesn't stop.
It just wants to win.
It wants to beat the other person down, whether it's physically
or whether it's mentally or whatever way, they just want to win.
Whereas mature anger says, well, I'm not worried about winning,
but I.
But I do want to get over what I care about.
But in the meantime, I understand you care about something
too.
Perhaps we can both share what we care about deeply and from an
honest and genuine place.
I hope that makes sense.
I hope it gives you an insight into what a more mature anger looks
like.
Don't get rid of your anger.
Use it, benefit from it.
Let the world benefit from the fact that you care deeply about something.
You know, some of the biggest changes in the world, some of the
most amazing things in the world that we enjoy today come about
because someone was once angry.
They might have been angry that, you know, there was an injustice,
or they might have been angry that, you know, they got to walk
to a payphone so they.
They invented a phone or angry.
The remote controls used to have a cable that people used to
fold over across the front room.
You know, someone was, like, annoyed by this.
They were inspired to go and invent a remote control.
The world's changed by anger and desire and drive and emotions.
Use them.
Use them, but not in an immature way.
Use them in a wisdom way to drive the world forward.
Drive yourself forward.
No longer.
It's to get rid of the anger.
It's to embrace the anger.
Embrace your anger.
Embrace the fact that you care about something deeply.
I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.
And in the next podcast, I'm talking about the story in Hades
about Cephis, Sisyphus.
That's it, Sisyphus.
And about the way he was condemned and his punishment was
to push a rock up a hill and watch it roll down for the rest of
his life, for eternity.
Not in the rest of his life, for eternity.
So what did we learn from that?
What did we learn from this story?
That's my next podcast.
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