I'm very anti-antidepressants. It's not the chemicals of my brain that's a problem; it's reality. I don't think tricking my brain into reinterpreting reality is going to help.
It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.
You either control your mind or it controls you.
Today I will be the master of my emotions.
I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.
When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress or chase away our anger is to suppress or chase away ourselves. When anger is born, we can be aware that anger is an energy in us, and we can change that energy into another kind of energy. If we want to transform it, first we have to know how to accept it.
We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.
What I can control is how I react. I can't control anything else.
Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
Almost all stress, tension, anxiety, and frustration, both in life and in work, comes from doing one thing while you believe and value something completely different.
He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.
When you are angry, you make bad decisions in direct proportion to the level of your anger.
Control your own mind, and you may never be controlled by the mind of another.
When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.
I have given a name to my pain, and call it "dog".
I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.
Emotional self-control-- delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness- underlies accomplishment of every sort
You are very easily exasperated, my dear. If you're a leaf trembling on a wide, deep river, relax and ride the current. It's always worked for me, I assure you.
Are we fighting?" I asked Morelli. "No. Were discussing." "Are you sure?" "Am I yelling?" Morelli asked. "Is my face purple? Are the cords on my neck standing out? Am I waving my arms around?" "No." "The were not fighting.
If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.
All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
From a very early age, my wife and I told our son that there are times and places for everything. I told him, look, when you're in class, you have to be quiet and listen to your teacher, but when you go out to the playground, you can scream and be silly.
Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind.
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.
The best way to excape his ire Is, not to seem too happy.
