Anger Mismanagement

Dear Dr Darcy:

I am constantly pissed off and I need your help dealing with my anger.  I wasn’t always like this but over the past couple of years I’ve found that people really annoy me.  I’m like that character in Network – I can’t take it anymore!!  I battle everyday with my phone company, I realize I don’t like anyone I work with, people on the subway are hateful, bicyclists in the city are the Devil’s evil, selfish, smug entitled spawn and don’t get me started on those women with their strollers who’ve taken over not just my neighborhood but the whole city and then have the nerve to bring their wailing offspring into whatever restaurant I’m in. I can’t watch the news because I’ll literally yell at the TV.  Everywhere I go someone’s always in my face, asking for money, demanding space.  I used to be fun and easygoing.  Help.

ANSWER

OK, Cranky Pants, I hear you.  The world is filled with incompetents, most of whom were born just to get in your way, slow you down, and fuck up your day. I get it.

Listen, you narcissistic nut, despite all evidence to the contrary, the world doesn’t revolve around you. You look for evidence throughout the day that people suck, and Cranky Pants, you find it.

We all have basic beliefs about the world.  Your ego (which in your case is your compass), in it’s ongoing effort to protect itself, looks to the world for confirmation that people suck, because it doesn’t want to be wrong.  Human nature is funny that way.  We’re hardwired to prefer being right over being happy. It’s wonderful that you have the conscious intent to be easygoing, but you, Cranky Pants, are not one of those humans who operates mostly from conscious intent.  You are like 98% of the world who has no idea why his life looks the way it does.

If you want to change your life you must embrace a radically new tool. If I were you, I’d order a meditation program from a company called Centerpointe. You can purchase the program on the right hand side of my blog.  What this program will do for you is work from the inside out to raise your awareness so that you begin to have a moment in between your triggers (the things that piss you off) and your reactions.  Once you have that moment of pause, you’ll have the space you need to choose new meaning about the trigger/event.  You may decide that the woman with the baby carriage is not selfish, because when you choose to view her as selfish, you get one blood pressure spike closer to a fucking heart attack, so you’ll choose new meaning, one that keeps you calm and happy.

There’s a world of difference between verbalizing that you want to be easygoing and doing something to learn how to be more easygoing.  Taking that action is what separates chronic complainers like yourself from people like me. Close the gap, Cranky Pants.

Writer’s Stats: Male, Straight.