Seven Buddhist Tips For Dealing With Anger

Buddhists believe that people need special training to deal with anger. It takes certain attitudes and virtues. In this article, we share seven Buddhist tips to help you achieve this.

Being angry every now and then is completely normal. However, if you don’t know how to deal with this, you can hurt yourself and others a lot. Remember that a few minutes of anger can change a whole life.

In Buddhism, meditation serves as a way to develop greater self-control and awareness. However, besides meditation, there are a few more keys that can help you deal with anger. Here are seven of them:

Seven Buddhist Tips for Dealing with Anger

1. Acceptance can help you deal with anger

According to Buddhism, the best way to deal with anger is to accept that you are angry. It may seem cliché, but many people try to hide their anger because they are ashamed of how they feel.

However, it is good to remember that no emotion is good or bad. Rather, it’s about how you deal with what’s happening to you and what you’re feeling. People can experience all kinds of emotions, so it is important to recognize and accept them all.

2. Be a hero

If you completely explode when you’re angry and let your impulses run wild, then you don’t know how to deal with this emotion. Only heroes know how to deal with their anger. They know that not controlling their anger only leads to new evils.

Heroism involves not reacting and instead being patient. At the same time, it also means that you don’t get carried away. In other words, it involves waiting and not allowing yourself to become a prisoner of your impulses. Give yourself some time to respond intelligently to any situation.

2. Realism

Anger is an emotion that puts you in danger and threatens your physical and mental health. It’s your enemy. However, some people tend to believe in the illusion that not controlling their anger is a way of reaffirming themselves.

It is important that you do not let yourself be carried away by this fantasy. That same anger can also cause you to overestimate a situation at the same time. That’s why it’s so important to stay realistic. Is the situation or person really hurting you? Will exploding with anger really help you find a solution?

4. Observation

This is another one of those very helpful Buddhist tips for dealing with anger. Before reacting, it’s good to take a moment to think about what’s going on in your body. Which muscles are tense? How do you feel in your stomach? How do you breathe?

In addition, it is also important to analyze the ideas that are going through your head. Instead of thinking about the other person or the situation that is causing you discomfort, focus your attention on yourself. This exercise will help you calm down.

5. Learn from the enemy

Buddhism says to care for and protect your enemy. This seems contradictory at first. However, it is a very intelligent way of dealing with anger. You need to ask yourself what you can learn from that person or situation that is making you angry.

It is important to be willing to compromise. Remember that neither you nor your enemy possess the absolute truth. Also, remember that not everyone has to agree with you all the time. Try to understand the reason behind everything that is against you. There is certainly something to learn.

6. Think about death

Many people have had a near-death experience that has changed their outlook on life. This is because these kinds of experiences remind people that everything ends, including life. For this reason, it is not good to waste your life on nonsense.

One of the most useful Buddhist tips, therefore, is to ask yourself how important that person or situation would be if today were the last day of your life. Would it be worth spending the last hours of your life on that situation, feeling, or person?

7. Sow

According to Buddhists and common sense, you usually reap what you sow. You are therefore responsible for your own suffering. If you sow destruction, you will also reap destruction. Likewise, if you start a cycle of violence, sooner or later you will become a victim yourself.

So be careful how you act. Think about your well-being and think about the consequences. It is virtually impossible to do this when you are angry. So the best thing to do is to give yourself some time to think.

All of these Buddhist tips for dealing with anger try to remind us that acting impulsively almost always has negative consequences. Your mind should determine your actions, not the other way around.