Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake

 

The best revenge is no revenge. The best revenge is to smile at hatred. To stifle your anger and show them that you can be happy. Because there’s no better strategy than to act calmly and wisely moving forward, with a firm gaze and a peaceful heart, knowing that you do not need to carry that burden.

 

Confucius wisely said that before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. One for you and one for your adversary. But unfortunately, revenge still seems “attractive”.

“To err is human to forgive divine”.

-Alexander Pope

We used that word, attraction, for a reason. It’s a human behavior, we know that. In fact, something that writers and film producers know well is that revenge fascinates us. We hear that revenge is like medicine: it helps in small doses, but if consumed in high quantities it can kill us.

Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte Cristo, is a great literary example. He taught us that the best revenge is served cold, unhurried and perfectly calculated. Agatha Christie, meanwhile, brought us into a complex, equally violent plot in “And Then There Were None” to teach us that evil should be properly avenged.

Revenge attracts us and sometimes we even justify it. However, what are the psychological processes behind it?

Most of us at some point in our lives have felt so aggrieved, hurt and offended that the shadow of that bitter, but almost always tempting, figure has gone through our minds: revenge. Our moral compasses deviate a few degrees and we imagine ways we can give them a taste of their own medicine.

Something that should be clear from the beginning and that psychologist Gordon E. Finley — a great expert in criminal behavior — reminds us of, is that revenge has little to do with morality.

Revenge is an impulse; it is the catharsis of rage and hatred. For example, University of Zurich professor Ernst Fehr’s studies have revealed that more than 40% of the decisions that are carried out in the business world have “revenge” on a competitor as their sole objective.

The same thing happens with criminal acts. More than half of them are committed because of accumulated rancor toward someone and by an express desire to carry out revenge. It forces us to assume that good revenge does not exist.

Beyond its results, something more disturbing happens, something more revealing: we become aggressors. We actually perpetuate the moral deficiency of the person who originally hurt us.

It would be easy to say that the best revenge is no revenge because that’s what moral and common sense dictates. Because that’s what the religious, spiritual and philosophical leaders tell us. But now let’s look at it from a purely psychological standpoint.

For example, have you ever wondered what the profile is for people who are very vengeful? 

Poor emotional management.

Little self-knowledge.

The belief that they know what is absolute and universal. They are the law and justice, an example of what every person should be. Seeing everything as black or white. Either you’re with me or you’re not. Things are done right or they are done wrong. Neither forgiving nor forgetting, living chained to the past and resentment. As we see from this psychological and emotional framework, revenge or the desire for revenge has no good side. This impulse, this need, eats you up and does away with good judgment. It completely throws away your chance to become a better person and enjoy your life.

We may be attracted to Edmond Dantès’ kind of comic justice. However, underneath it is nothing but suffering and loneliness. We stick by our conclusion: the best revenge is no revenge. In fact, moving on and showing people that you’re happy is the best revenge of all.

Judgment is a negative frequency, provided it smacks of jealousy.

There are a lot of things that we learn when we grow up. It starts out with learning how to walk and talk. Then we move on to bigger things. We learn how to add and subtract. We learn how to read and write. Pretty soon that adding and subtracting turns into multiplying and dividing. Next thing you know after that we are sitting in calculus class trying to figure out very complex equations.

My point is the human brain is always growing and learning. As we grow up, our interests change. We grow as humans because we are learning and we learn in many different ways. Sometimes we learn in school and sometimes we learn by the mistakes that we make in life. Mistakes are a part of living, but they are also a beautiful part of life. If you don’t make mistakes, you will never learn.

Think back on a time where you may have said something or did something that may have been ignorant, mean, or just weird. Think about the time that you said or did something that if you could go back you would never do again. Every single one of us has those moments. Those moments are moments that we try to bury into the back of our brains and forget that they ever happened, but sometimes it is good to look back because you can see how far you’ve come.

Every person on this earth has done or said something that they regret. In fact, every person on this earth has done or said multiple things that they regret and are not too proud of. This is why it is important not to define people based on the decisions that they have made in the past but on the person that they are now.

I knew a lot of people from high school who seemed as if they were going nowhere in life. However, when they went to college, it was as if something changed. They grew as people. They were no longer the same person that they used to be. They were now smarter, more intelligent and actually had opinions about the world. I could go back to some of the stupid decisions that they made in high school, and judge them for that, but at the same time, they could do the same to me.

If you are the type of person who never forgets what someone has done in the past, you need to look yourself in the mirror and think about all the things you have done too. Why are you the one bringing up somebody’s past? Is it to make you feel better about yourself? And to those of you who are being judged for your past mistakes, you made them. You can’t change them now. You are above the criticism, though. People who try to nail you on what you’ve done in the past are just trying to bring you down, stay up. Own it. “Yes, I did that and it was a bad decision. I’m sorry.” As long as you have learned from those mistakes, they do not define you anymore. No one on this earth is perfect. The most important thing at the end of the day is that you are happy with the person that you are and you never stop learning. Also, if people want to live inside of your past, leave them there, it’s where they belong.

Help others without expecting anything in return.

 A lady worked at a meat distribution factory. One day, when she finished with her work schedule, she went into the meat cold room (Freezer) to inspect something, but in a moment of misfortune, the door closed and she was locked inside with no help in sight.

Although she screamed and knocked with all her might, her cries went unheard as no one could hear her. Most of the workers had already gone, and outside the cold room it’s impossible to hear what was going on inside.

Five hours later, whilst she was at the verge of death, the security guard of the factory eventually opened the door.

She was miraculously saved from dying that day.

When she later asked the security guard how he had come to open the door, which wasn’t his usual work routine.

His explanation: “I’ve been working in this factory for 35 years, hundreds of workers come in and out every day, but you’re one of the few who greet me in the morning and say goodbye to me every night when leaving after work. Many treat me as if I’m invisible.

Today, as you reported for work, like all other days, you greeted me in your simple manner ‘Hello’. But this evening after working hours, I curiously observed that I had not heard your “Bye, see you tomorrow”.

Hence, I decided to check around the factory. I look forward to your ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ every day because they remind me that I am someone.

By not hearing your farewell today, I knew something had happened. That’s why I was searching every where for you.”

Be humble, love and respect those around you. Try to have an impact on people who cross your path every day, you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Cheers!

Listen to Yourself. Forgive Yourself. Accept Yourself. Help Yourself.

When something’s bothering you, you know that getting your mind off of it is easier said than done. In fact, research shows that when people are instructed not to think about a specific topic, it makes it even harder to get that topic out of their minds. But rehashing negative thoughts over and over in your head, also known as rumination, can be unpleasant and counterproductive—and in some cases, it can even lead to chronic depression.

It’s like a needle in a groove, Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries. “As the groove gets deeper and deeper, the needle has a harder time getting out of the groove.” What’s more, rumination can actually make you more angry or upset than you were originally, because the issue becomes magnified in your mind.

 

Luckily, there are a few techniques that can help you stop dwelling on negative thoughts and refocus your mind on something positive, it just takes a bit of distraction and a healthy dose of willpower.

Go Shopping in Your Mind

One distraction trick is to visualize yourself in the grocery store. “Try to picture all of the items on one shelf in the store, and the order that you see them in,” he says. Don’t do a lot of food shopping? Think about something else that requires concentration: the order of books on your bookshelf, or the order of songs in an album or playlist you like to listen to, for example. You don’t have to do it for long—maybe 30 seconds or a minute, but the key is to be disciplined about it and do it each time that negative thought comes back—even if that means doing it 20 times an hour. “It may seem temporary, but if you reinforce these patterns enough, it can improve your mood and your decision making abilities. You can actually train your brain to go in a different direction when these thoughts come up.

Keep Positive Company

If you can’t get troublesome feelings out of your mind, it may have something to do with your social circle. It’s common for college students to pick up rumination-like behaviors from their roommates. Because rumination often involves worrying and thinking aloud, it’s a habit that can be easily mirrored by other people, the researchers say. Avoid perpetually negative people when you can, or at least be aware of what habits might be rubbing off on you.

Physically Throw Them Away

It may sound crazy, but clearing your head of a nagging thought could be as easy as writing it down on a piece of paper—and tossing it in the trash. People who wrote down negative things about their bodies and then threw them away had a more positive self image a few minutes later, compared to those who kept the papers with them. However you tag your thoughts—as trash or as worthy of protection—seems to make a difference in how you use those thoughts. Don’t want to waste paper? Doing this exercise on the computer, by dragging a text document into the “trash can,” worked too.

 

Have a Cup of Tea

Negative thoughts can occur for many different reasons—but if yours are focused on feeling lonely, you may gain some comfort by warming up, literally. People recalled fewer negative feelings about a past lonely experience when they were holding a hot pack. (They also found that lonely people tend to take longer hot showers.) Substituting physical warmth for emotional warmth can be a quick fix, the researchers say—just don’t let it take the place of real human interaction in the long run.

Reframe Your Situation

“If your urge to ruminate is very strong, distracting yourself isn’t going to be easy,” says Winch. “So before you try, it may be necessary to reframe or reappraise the situation in your head. If you get stuck in the airport for hours because of a cancelled flight, for example, don’t think of what you’re missing out on. Instead, see it as a chance to get work done, or to call your parents or an old friend. Once you’ve successfully reframed your situation, it may be easier to distract yourself with a visualization exercise, a book or crossword puzzle, or a quick stroll.

The tongue like a sharp knife, kills without drawing blood

“Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.” Lashing out, saying things in anger, yelling, name calling, demeaning, putting someone down…all of these things create wounds that are far slower to heal than a physical wound and they leave emotional scars behind that never quite go away. That is why it is so important to be mindful of the words we say to people.

Our words can be the most powerful tool we have for good or they can be the most powerful tool of destruction. The choice is up to us.

A parable that really paints the picture of the scars words can leave is below: There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence.

Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. No matter what happens from now on, this fence will never be the same.

Saying or doing hurtful things in anger produces the same kind of result. There will always be a scar. It won’t matter how many times you say you’re sorry, or how many years pass, the scar will still be there. Never forget, people are much more valuable than an old fence.”

Be careful with your words. Nothing causes more regret then saying something that hurts another person. Without question, at the end of the day you will never regret being kind! Have a great day everyone!

If you don't know the whole story, please shut up

Maybe we all jump to conclusions too quickly. We see the girl with the too-short skirt and label her as “easy.” We see the boy with greasy hair and call him “creepy.” We see the teen parents and immediately assume they’re “irresponsible.”

We forget that there are still people under those labels—ones who are sensitive and kind, ones who are complicated and misunderstood. We condemn the cheater but never bother to wonder why they cheat. We hate someone for the things they do but never bother to ask them why they do it. We view the world from a narrow lens and assume that’s all there is, then hurt when others do the same to us.

If all of humanity has one thing in common, it’s this: We have all been judged unfairly by someone who simply misunderstood us. Every single one of us has been on the other side of a rumor or a scandal, even just a negative thought. We’ve all been labeled in ways that make us feel embarrassed, even ashamed.

It’s easy to get caught up in what others think about you, but the fact of the matter is: Most of the people who judge you in life don’t know you. And they definitely don’t know the whole story.

 

People who know nothing more than your name will form opinions about you. There will always be someone out there who assumes they understand you just from a single glance, without knowing where you’ve been, where you’re going, or where you want to be. There will always be people who think you’re weaker, less intelligent, less sophisticated, or less kind than you actually are.

But those people don’t know you.

There’s a difference between the people who see what you do and the people who see you. The former only understand a sliver of the situation and draw conclusions from what they perceive. The latter know you well enough to understand your motivations, or at least understand when there’s more to the story than what they see. Those are the opinions that matter. Not those of the people who only see a piece of the puzzle and decide they understand the whole situation, but the ones who have watched you put the entire thing together and recognize the bigger picture.

 

Of course, it’s hard not to care about what people say. It’s hard not to hurt over what they think. It’s harder to admit that maybe we do the same things to people that they do to us, that we are the culprit of the same crimes we condemn. That in other people’s lives, we too are the people who simply see what others do, not who they truly are.

Voltaire once wrote, “It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.” Maybe this is something we can practice in everyday life. Instead of judging someone for something we think we understand, we should consider the other sides of the story that we cannot see.

Because there will always be things we do not know.

I don’t know why some girl wears a too-short skirt or why some boy has greasy hair—and I definitely don’t know what, if anything, it says says about their character. I don’t know how a couple of teen parents ended up with kids—whether it was serendipity, or a life-changing mistake.

Just as no one knows how I ended up here, in this place that I am now, in this job I work, with the friends I’ve made. No one— and I mean no one—can definitively judge what I’ve done. Or what you’ve done. It’s just not their place.

Remember, the truth is that no one else knows the full story. Your story is yours and yours alone. At the end of the day, we are all just people doing our best with what we’ve been given. You are your own judge and jury, and it’s your approval alone that matters above all.

क्लास टीचर का सबक

एक बार एक student जल्दबाजी में अपनी सीट पर पहुंचने के चक्कर में दूसरे student से टकरा गया| दूसरा student बोतल से पानी पी रहा था तो धक्का लगने की वजह से पानी उसकी कमीज पर गिर गया और उसकी कमीज गीली हो गई|

दूसरा student पहले student पर चिल्लाया, देख कर नहीं चल सकते क्या अंधे?

पहले student ने विनम्रता से जवाब देते हुए:- कहा माफ करना गलती से लग गया|

लेकिन पहला student जितनी विनम्रता से माफी मांग रहा था दूसरा student उस पर उतना ही भड़क रहा था| पूरा class यह सब देख रहा था|

तभी class teacher क्लास रूम में आती हैं और उनका गुस्सा शांत कराकर उनको अपनी अपनी सीटों पर बैठा देती है|

टीचर उनको एक ज्ञान की बात सुनाती है:-

एक बार एक मीटिंग में 2 लोग हिस्सा लेने गए हुए थे| दोनों के हाथ में गर्म चाय से भरे हुए कप थे| किसी वजह से दोनों एक दूसरे से टकरा गए और गर्म चाय से भरे हुए कप एक दूसरे के ऊपर छलक गए|

दोनों लोगों में बहस शुरू हो गई और मामला इतना serious हो गया कि पुलिस बुलानी पड़ गई और उन दोनों को जेल हो गई|

टीचर बोली असल में कप उनका मन था जिसमें गर्म गर्म चाय यानी गुस्से वाले भाव भरे हुए थे| जैसे ही दोनों में टकराव हुआ दोनों के मन के भाव यानी गुस्सा जिसे हम चाय कह रहे हैं, एक दूसरे पर बरस पड़े और दोनों में झड़प हो गई|

हम सबके साथ हमारा कप हमेशा होता है| उसमें चाय भरेंगे तो चाय ही गिरेगी ना| अगर ठंडा पानी भरेंगे तो ठंडा पानी गिरेगा| तो अब आप लोग ही तय करिए कि आपको अपने कप में क्या भरना है|

सीख:-

जैसे हमारे विचार होते हैं ठीक वैसा ही हमारा व्यवहार होता है