by Amanda Rosinski, M.A.
“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” – Buddha
I recently had a day where I was trying to spend time focusing on self-care, but it seemed like bad things kept happening to try and ruin my attempts at relaxation and self-care. I started feeling increasingly frustrated as one thing after another seemed to be going wrong. I eventually just became angry, entirely defeating the purpose of my self-care day. I decided to stop stewing in my anger and think about what I was doing to myself. I chose to feel angry by thinking irrational beliefs. I wanted things to go a certain way that day. Not only did I want them to go a certain way – I demanded that things go a certain way. I convinced myself that I couldn’t stand it if things didn’t go as planned. I had to challenge those irrational beliefs to pull myself out of feeling angry, because I knew that if I didn’t, my anger would ruin the rest of my day.
So did things really need to go a certain way that day? Some things may not have gone as planned, but who decided that things absolutely must go as planned?! Was I actually not going to be able to tolerate it if things went differently than planned? When posing those questions to myself, it became obvious that I was thinking in a rigid manner. Of course I wanted things to go as planned, but there was no rule book stating they must go as planned. And I have survived things going differently than planned before, so why wouldn’t I survive it this time? I may not like having to tolerate things going differently than planned, but I can certainly stand it, as I’ve done before. After challenging my irrational beliefs, I found myself to be not only thinking more flexibly, but also feeling less angry. It’s okay that things didn’t go as planned, I was not going to let my anger punish me anymore. Thinking rationally allowed me to let go of my irrational beliefs and angry feelings, allowed me to feel frustrated instead of anger, and allowed me to move on and get back to my relaxation and self-care.
