This question demands a detailed answer for the fact that it was very difficult even for a great sage like VishwaMitra to overcome these emotions.
First of all, Why do you want to overcome these emotions? Because you clearly know that they do not help you in anyway.
Who is the first victim of your anger? Obviously it is YOU. Because it is you who is getting hurt inside before it is expressed. By knowing this answer, you have already reached the first mile of this journey by understanding and accepting that we, ourselves are the first victims of anger and irritation.
If we can dive a bit deeper to think what is that making us angry and irritated, we can find a solution and deploy it. All it needs is understanding and patience. How do we achieve it?
Let us understand this: When you are angry, you are hurting inside and now you want to pass that on to someone else. This expression of hurt is anger. But why are you hurt? Coz something happened against your expectations or somebody acted in a way you do not like.
Now you have a choice.You can either become angry and irritated and scold the other person or scold yourself for being in that situation. This is very simple but the outcome is you will end up hurting yourself or the person vulnerable to you.
The other act is, you can try to understand why it had happened that way and move on (or) try to educate the other person responsible for the situation. You need patience and intelligence to do this. Not a simple thing to do.And this is the reason we tend to choose the former and become angry.
The main reason for us to become angry is our judgemental nature. We are all the time biased because of the nature of our mind. In a situation, if we can drop our mind and stop being judgemental, half of our problem is solved. By this we can save ourselves from the self-hurt. When we are nonbiased in our approach, our mind is free from prejudice and we will be able to think clearly.
Everyone is unique and have the freedom to think and act the way they want based on their experiences of life. Who are we to curtail it. Do we like someone taking away our freedom of thought or expression? Do we like someone getting angry on us? Then why don’t we give others too the freedom to think and act the way they want. Let us give them the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. We are able to achieve this stage is in life just because of the mistakes we made in the past and because of the experiences we have had. This doesn’t in anyway take away our responsibility of guiding them.
Generally, we tend to be angry or irritated:
-When we have too much work and little time to complete
-Many expectations, difficulty in managing
-Multitasking
-Not interested
-When we think the work given to us is very low (not to my standard)
-Useless work
-Much work, little pay
-No proper communication
-Work allocated suddenly
-Behavioural problems with others etc.,
This will itself become the size of an encyclopaedia.
Let us explore some techniques to overcome anger and irritation:
Short time:
-Count numbers from 1 to 30 when you are little angry, a hundred when much angry.
-Observe the change of breath. You tend to breath fast when angry. When you start observing your breath, it will start slowing down and you will become calm after some time.
-Slowly move away from that situation or place.
-Take a walk
-Sit in the lap of nature and set your gaze on the farther end of earth, the meeting place of the earth and the sky. Or look up at the sky for a few seconds. Keep changing your field of observation every minute for some time.
-Ignore the situation, Call your dearest friend and talk on a different topic.
Long term:
-Do not multi-task. Always one at a time.
-Always plan your day.
-Eat healthy, do work outs
-Pranayama, Yoga & Meditation
-Take out time for yourself, go on some trips with your dearest ones
-Read books, develop some hobbies
-Join some organization of your interests
Many more…..
WHENEVER YOU ARE ANGRY OR IRRITATED, BECOME AWARE OF THOSE SENSATIONS INSIDE YOU. As this observation increases, these emotions will go away over a period of time.
All The Best!!
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