Learn from Will Smith. Here’s how to control your anger

(How to master emotional control that will save you pain in future)

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We saw an unfortunate and unnecessary display of a man’s uncontrolled anger at the Oscars.

He failed to take control - despite his emotions - and he suffered the consequences with a regretful act that felt like a smack to the face.

Humans have struggled with their emotions since the dawn of time.

We struggle because we just don’t understand how emotions work.

The first step to managing our emotions then is in understanding them.

This changed my life: your feelings reflect your thoughts.

If you think of a sad thought, you will feel the emotional experience of that sad thought. Try it now.

Think of something sad that’s close to your heart. See? You can feel the sadness in your chest. It’s a feeling.

Thoughts ARE feelings. They are two sides of the same coin.

When Chris Rock said his joke, Will envisioned the injustice of this joke in his mind.

He had his own interpretation of the joke. It’s always an interpretation created with our thoughts.

His thought at that moment before he ran on stage went something like this:

‘Chris just made me look like a weak man in public, and this needs to be punished.’

This angry thought immediately created a physical response in Will’s body.

It would have felt like pure rage to Will - rage that fed into his decision to hit a man live on television.

The problem here (beyond him making a dumb mistake): Will took his own thinking far too seriously.

This is when people get into trouble. They buy into the validity of their thoughts and the feelings created by those thoughts.

We can’t forget that thoughts are approximations.

They are self-created. They are lies.

We can create tremendous suffering for ourselves by living in our own constructed realities that others do not share.

Emotions are simply indications of the state of our minds in the moment.

If we feel angry, it just means we are holding on to an angry thought.

If we’re feeling low, our bodies are telling us to quit thinking like this and get out and be assertive.

What Chris said may have been disrespectful but had Will slowed down and seen that he was a victim of his thoughts, he would have exerted some control.

We have the power to do this by taking a split second to soften ourselves physically and breathe. Do it now.

Drop your shoulders.

We can influence our minds by relaxing ourselves.

This allows our thoughts to settle for a moment, unveiling the peaceful wisdom that lies beneath these rageful thoughts.

This is how just one second can make all the difference between committing an act of violence, and taking the better, more mature route: maintaining one’s composure.

This event at the Oscars reminds us of the immense power our thoughts can have over us if we allow them to.

Angry thoughts are not always avoidable.

But angry, and potentially shameful actions are.

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