There’s the anger that we feel in the moment something happens and the anger we choose to carry. Most often I love to nurse my anger. After all, it’s justified. I have a right to be angry for what they did or didn’t do or say. I have good reason for it and good reason to keep it. If I am honest, a lot of my anger has been nursed for years, even from my childhood. Some of those people are gone. It’s not really punishing them. I realize it is really punishing myself to keep carrying it.
So I take some time to ask some questions! What will happen if I let this anger go? How does this anger serve me? When I dig really deep, really listen, I can here myself say things like, “They will get away with it if I let it go!” , “It makes me strong!”, or “it protects me!”. So I ask for what is really true around that. And when I hear the truth – “She won’t get away with it. She paid for it all of her life. Look at the life it really gave her.” “The truth really is that my anger is not my real source of strength!”, and “the real truth is that it doesn’t protect me, it just puts up a wall.”
Then I can imagine myself letting that anger go. Really letting it go. The result is always a release of pain, a lightness of spirit, a source of freedom.
So why do I still keep on finding new sources of anger and still find myself wanting to nurse them. The answer – as long as I believe the lie that they will get away with it or that it’s the source of my strength or it protects me or whatever other lie then I will hold on. Even when I have already experienced freedom.
Are you willing to look at your anger too? Are you willing to examine what you believe around that?
What really matters? 