How to Live a Life Free of Anger

If you picked up this book because you want to know how to get rid of anger, you picked up the wrong book. This book is about anger management — recognizing the source of your anger and then evaluating your responses to it. But as a side note to the main thrust of this book, I can tell you how to be anger-free. You only need to read these few short pages.

There are three ways to live a life free from anger. The first is to be in a coma. The second is to stop caring about anything.

Seriously! If you stop caring, you will not get angry. Haven't you ever met two people who've experienced the same situation, but one is upset and angry and the other is not? When you ask the second person why, he will tell you that he doesn't care. It doesn't bother him. No skin off his back. He is not emotionally invested in the situation; therefore he is not mad. The angry person cares, while the non-angry person does not.

You may know someone who has experienced this, or you may have experienced it yourself — not caring about something. It is called apathy (or as some people would say, "Whatever!"). Apathy is not caring. Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. Apathy is absence of emotion. Stop caring, and you'll stop being angry. But the fact that we are westerners — driven to achieve, to consume, and to gain status — sets the stage for countless unmet expectations. When we care about stuff, we have the potential for being disappointed and feeling angry.

We don't always start out being apathetic, with the intention of not caring. Instead we can move in that direction over time. After many disappointments, we develop an unintentional self-defense mechanism that saves our soul, our emotional reservoir. We can make the decision to stop caring because it hurts too much. Sometimes it is a gradual slide into apathy, and other times it is a spontaneous decision not to care.

For example, have you ever been so mad at someone (or someone has been so mad at you) that you arrive at the place where you make the decision to stop caring? You may even have told that person, "I don't care what you do or where you go. Stay out of my life." Or perhaps you stopped getting involved in or you cut off relationships because you don't care anymore. This could be a former boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife, or any other person who was involved in your life. It could even be a job, hobby, or organization that you walked away from. You became so angry that you had to quit being emotionally invested. You stopped caring.

If you have an emotional investment in someone, than there is a risk that he or she can hurt you and make you angry. We end up being angry because things didn't work out. Life is all about having expectations and trying to fulfill them.

Often we'll reflect back on our lives and whether or not they have met our expectations. If they have, then we are generally happy; if they haven't, then we might be bitter and angry. What kind of person do you want to be — a bitter person or a better person? A better person is one who has gone through life understanding and accepting that it will not meet all their expectations. A bitter person is one who decides that life isn't fair and has cheated him out of opportunities. A bitter person believes that life is hard and has robbed him of some or most of his expectations. A better person believes that life is hard but good, and things turned out all right. Life met most of his expectations.

You can feel anger about society in general, an organization, or your workplace, or any activity in which you participate. Then you can get tired of being angry, make a conscious decision to stop caring about the world around you, and drop out emotionally and/or physically. That is apathy in its full glory. Moving to a log cabin in the woods and living off the land doesn't sound so bad sometimes, because it removes the many expectations you have regarding others in your life. Living in a log cabin would mean that you would only have to deal with yourself and Mother Nature.

A funny story that happened to me a few years ago, when I took my family to Disney World in Florida, illustrates what apathy is all about. I was waiting in line with my granddaughter, Gabrielle (who, by the way, gave me permission to tell this story). Since the lines were consistently long, I would pass the time by making small talk with people in line around me.

Finally Gabrielle asked me, "How come you are always talking to people?"

I responded, "To pass the time. I find it interesting to learn where people come from and what they do."

She gave me that look — you know, the look teenagers give when they feel their parents are embarrassing them.

Since I was embarrassing her, I said, "Okay, then, let's you and I talk." I asked her the following questions (keeping in mind that she was very young, and slightly embarrassed that her grandpa was disturbing the peace):

"Do you want to talk about politics?"

"No" was her response.

"Do you want to talk about religion?"

"No" was her response.

"Do you want to talk about current events?"

"No" was her response.

I followed with a couple more questions, and she gave the same response. I then asked her why she didn't want to talk. She said that she didn't care. I then proceeded to ask her if she knew what apathy meant. She said no, and that she didn't care.

Many people around us in line started to giggle, as they couldn't help listening in on our conversation. She actually knew the meaning of the word apathy, but she didn't know that she knew. Thank you, Gabrielle, for letting me share that.

This apathy (not caring) is a basic human defensive response. When we stop caring for someone or when we withdraw from society, we may be helping preserve ourselves and our sanity. We can make a conscious decision to stop caring, and the end result or side effect is the elimination of our anger. This apathy helps us retain our sense of self-worth and our emotional energy, which is being depleted by the person or situation that is the focus of our anger.

Now if you want to be anger-free, take this apathy and apply it to every area of your life. If you do not care about anything, you will never be angry. If you don't care about the people...