OPINION: 'Positive emotions and responses make your life a nice place to live'

Think of all the times in your life you’ve judged someone or been angry at someone’s behaviour, perhaps irrationally.

Something about them just sets you on edge, raises your hackles and you find yourself either blaming them for how you feel or judging them without any second thought. Well what if we take a minute to have that second thought?

What if I told you that our anger or judgement toward another person is a reflection of yourself, a recognition of parts of you that you don’t like or parts that are missing or a judgement based on social or personal morality?

The first case, where you judge someone who irritates you, happens when you observe traits in another that you recognise as negatives in yourself.

The person irritates you as your ego doesn’t approve of what you are seeing but rather than admit that you behave in that way, you externalise the feeling and direct it to someone else.

The second case is when you see in others, traits you are lacking in yourself.

Perhaps they are more successful in life than you feel you should be and jealousy rears its ugly head and you direct negative thoughts toward them.

Again, that’s an ego driven externalisation because you feel “less than”, less capable or popular or whatever the emotion that surfaces might be.

The third happens when our own morality sees in someone behaviours that are deemed unacceptable as they contravene or fall short of our own standards of conduct or those society has put in place.

This is where jealousy can pop up again, fueling our negative feelings and creating a superiority or inferiority feeling in us.

Which one largely depends on the individual and how they see life.

All these things are reflections of yourself.

If you look in a mirror and see something out of place you’ll straighten it up, brush it down or smooth it out.

In short you’ll correct it, but you know you aren’t correcting the mirror, you’re correcting yourself.

The same is true of seeing faults in others. It’s often an opportunity to correct the feeling in yourself by being aware of your reaction to it and being self aware enough to sit with the feeling, examining and asking questions of yourself.

It’s not enough though, to simply sit with the feeling until it becomes passive and doesn’t affect you.

That won’t resolve the issue and the next time you encounter the same person the same feelings will arise.

No, you’ve got to talk to it and listen to what it may be telling you, understand it’s root cause, and to do that you’ve got to learn to be honest with yourself and also know to be careful while you do because you’re best at lying to yourself and creating reasons for you to justify how you reacted.

Judge not lest ye be judged and Remove the rafter from thine own eye before you tell me to take the straw from mine are two well known biblical aphorisms that ring true in this case.

Another would be to let he who is without sin cast the first stone, a caution to look inside at your own feelings before you sit in judgement on anyone else.

It might also have continued to advise that we are all frail humans, subject to the failings of ego and self-righteousness.

We should cultivate compassion in every facet of life, both for others and for ourselves.

If someone’s driving is less than it might be, less expert than your own, instead of becoming angry or frustrated, remember that you have no idea what’s going on in their lives.

They may be distracted by bad news, a broken heart or financial worry but no matter the cause, look at them as someone who needs a break, the break of your better nature.

Take a moment to extend your compassion and understanding. The same holds true in every interaction in your life.

Make a choice to see them as part of you, both part of everything.

Remember that the hostility or anger you carry away with you is something you chose to carry and can learn to put down at any time.

This is Acceptance, learning to understand the passing nature of your emotions by simply choosing to put them down or pick them up, accepting that the choice determines the outcome you want. If you pick up negative, toxic emotions then that’s also what you wanted.

If that’s true you probably should ask yourself why.

After all, positive emotions and responses feel much better, weigh less and make your life a nice place to live.

Learning this kind of awareness is a wonderful way to get to know yourself better and to slow life down to your pace, where you can learn to respond rather than react.

It lets you see situations clearly, see yourself clearly and see others clearly.

This also gives you the tools to remove toxic people from your environment because sometimes the feelings you have toward people are their projection onto you. It’s a two way street!

If someone is hostile towards you, you can simply choose not to take the bait.

Remain calm, speak reasonably and be as neutral as Switzerland!

They will either respond by calming in response to your calmness or become more angry at which point you leave the conversation.

You can’t reason with someone at that point anyway and they carry the anger away for both of you.