this lady – let's call her Alexandra- who
was good and kind although she had a
really bad temper! For a year or so Mandy had to deal with
her extensively, and you would never
believe how hard that year was on her!
Alexandra didn't really like Mandy for
certain reasons made her obviously
biased against her, she seemed to be
fishing for her mistakes, even when
everything is perfectly fine her temper
suddenly strikes like a roaring storm,
and she starts provoking her as if she
deliberately wants to pick a fight!
She was old enough to be Mandy's
mother, so Mandy used just to swallow her pride and keep quite until she
finishes, then she states her point
calmly and politely and just moves on.
Actually Mandy was really grateful to
see that year comes to an end and so
was I, but after a while Mandy and I ran
into Alexandra once and we were really
surprised with how glad she was to see
Mandy, cheering and greeting until we
started to look around and see if she's
talking to someone else!
For some reason her love to Mandy was
real and sincere; she even spoke to her friends about her as the "angel" she
knew as I heard after that!
She had a complete turnover; it's like
she was a total new person; a new
person who is extremely nice and warm,
a person who appeared to love Mandy
so dearly burying all the hatchets that
were once dominating their relationship!
What was the secret of her
It may appear to be weird and
mysterious but it's not, simply manners
what did all that, she saw for herself
that Mandy wasn't a bad person like she was told, and ended up as a very good
friend of hers who would do anything
for and speaks only wonderfully about!
What could have happened if Mandy just
let herself be provoked and replied to
Alexandra’s storm with a storm of her
own?
What could have happened if she
surrendered to her desire to "win" the
fight every time?
Would it be really winning? As far as I'm concerned Mandy did win
only by self control what she would
never have won with temper. She won
Alexandra, every one talked to
Alexandra and most importantly she
won herself.
One might say: that's too difficult to
apply, When someone crosses the line,
this someone has to be stopped, they
are the ones who were being rude and
I'm just defending myself. Well, that's true of course, you must
stop people from mistreating you, I'm
not suggesting that you should show
any kind of weakness or to settle with
an insult; you just need to choose how
to stop a violation.
What you first feel once someone insults
or provokes you is a shock; someone
has just violated you, aggressively
invaded your FC casing you discomfort
and upset, that makes you angry and
hurt, a terrible heat starts to rise from
your heart to your brain telling you that
you have to avenge, take back control upon your boundaries and sure show
that rude intruder a lesson, and then
you act. At that point it's so hard to
stop or even to think about anything
whether your image or the
consequences of that upcoming fight,
you have combusted the anger engines
and there is no turn off button!
Anger is a chain reaction; if not stopped
in an early stage it won't stop until it
causes an explosion, you need to
interfere with the reaction before
ignition begins.
The chain is like this:
You can't control people's manners of
course, and you cannot stop your shock
as an immediate reaction, but exactly
here your mind can interfere, take over
and stop the next step before it's too
late.
But to do so you need a strong motive,
an answer to the irritating question
“why should I?” is the key for your mind to step in; why should I stop the
reaction? Why don’t I just teach those
invaders a lesson?
Well, you do feel violated that’s for
sure, and that makes you feel week and
in need for defense, but what do you
think started this in the first place?
What do you think made them that
aggressive? Look at it this way:
They are the ones that feel weakness or
else they wouldn’t have tried to
compensate that by the carelessness
and aggressiveness they show, nobody
would start a fight with no reason unless they are unsure and insecure.
Their low self esteem is pushing them
towards lowering others in order to feel
interiorly superior.
It’s this or that they suffer from severe
ignorance and prude social skills that
they can’t really tell what's appropriate
and what's not!
Either ways they are pathetic people you
should feel sorry for them instead of
being angry at them; you're not the
threatened one; they are! This way it
would be much easier for you to just smile, end the conversation calmly and
move on!
Remember; strength is in controlling
yourself not the others, and always keeping reason higher than desire.