How to never be angry again by Abraham Twerski

 "The concept of anger I think we have to think about the phases of anger there are three phases of anger one is somebody provokes me I feel angry okay I don't have any control over that right then there's the phase of anger of how do I react to it right do I walk away do I respond do I punch the guy in the face do I call them with some nesting it that's my reaction to anger and then the other thing is okay I didn't have any choice to be feeling angry when I was provoked how long am I going to hold on to that anger an hour a day 22 years right so in order to keep things straight I give these three phases three different names the feeling of anger I call anger the reaction to anger I call rage and the hanging onto the anger is called resentment right and then if you clarify it I said okay I can do nothing about my feeling of anger other than perhaps take some things in perspective right one of my father's teachings that helped me a great deal was that when somebody did something in my father which should have provoked anger my father would say you know what he did was so foolish if he only knew how fully said was what he did he wouldn't have done it so you know I feel sorry for the person for being such a fool but if you feel sorry for a person how can you be angry at him you know I feel pity for pity and anger doesn't go together but nevertheless I can't control how I feel when provoked but I certainly can control what my reaction is going to be and finally how long do I hang on to the resentments my greatest lesson came from Alcoholics Anonymous where somebody said harboring a resentment is allowing someone who you don't like to live inside your head without paying any rent and I'm not that kind of a guy I'm not a nice guy like that to let somebody else pay so hey help me get rid of resentments reacting to anger took me a while right to be able to control my rage and then I had to realize that yeah this is part of my being human animals react with rage when when provoked i as a human being I'm supposed to be above that I'm a northern Homo sapiens so I learned how to control my anger so I think those are if a person keeps those things in mind right and there's some people who feel guilty for feeling angry right especially at a parent you don't have a choice okay the feeling of anger is nothing so if you don't have a choice there's no reason to feel guilty about it how you react now my suggestion is keep an anger Journal right here's what happened today right somebody did this is that and here's what how I did right then at night it's it at the time that I'm provoked I think it isn't clear because I'm in this pressure to respond but at night when I look over what happened during the daytime and I say did I handle that in the best way possible could I have done something better and that becomes a lesson for the next time so I think keeping a journal about anger and how we respond to it is an excellent way of them because ultimately if I am enraged it doesn't hurt the other person as much as it hurts me"