Can you be angry and kind at the same time? The real question is how mature your anger is.

A man came into my home while the walls were being replaced and told me to move a van. I got stubborn. Later I sat with what my teacher Jun Po asks me. Has anybody ever made you angry? No. I chose it. I am angry because I care. Once you see that, you get to choose the response as well. Anger is not the problem. Immature anger is. Shouting about world hunger feeds nobody. Anger that moves something is worth having.

One thing to try: When anger arrives, name what you care about underneath it. Then act on that, not on the anger.

In this episode

• (2:36) The Cornish unit and the walls coming off
• (4:06) The man at the door who wanted the van moved
• (5:02) Where I got stubborn
• (6:45) Jun Po asks: has anybody ever made you angry
• (7:33) No. I chose it, because I care
• (8:46) The first three months of love, and what changes
• (11:17) Good. Be angry. Now do something with it
• (16:27) Do not get rid of your anger. Grow it up

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Steven

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So how mature is your anger? This is something I've been thinking about quite a lot recently

And about different emotions and about all our shame, guilt and desires and happiness and blissfulness.

All these different things we have, fear and anger. How mature are they?

You know, I think we all develop them at a young age, but they're not very mature. So how can

we grow it up? And what does a mature anger look like compared to an immature anger?

And that's what we're going to discuss on this podcast. And just by embracing, knowing

what it means to have a mature anger will automatically seep into your life. It will automatically change how

you have arguments and how you deal with your anger and how you can be slightly more persuasive when

arguments do occur.

Hey, I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast. And it's here to give you a little

more inner peace in life by giving you a deeper and a different perspective of how things work and how

we work and how to live from a a deeper more meaningful sense.

So talking about anger, The Tao Te Ching says, The best athlete wants his opponent at his

best. The best general enters the mind of his enemy. The best businessman serves the communal good.

The best leader follows the will of the people. All of them embody the virtue of non-competition

Not that they don't love to compete, But they do it in a spirit of play. In this, they are

like children and in the harmony of the Tao You know, if your arguments are in the spirit of play,

that's fine, but how often is this the case? I remember we were having our

all of our walls replaced. I live in what's called a Cornish unit. And if you've never seen what a

Cornish unit looks like, the bottom half of it is basically concrete and the top half of it is like

slates. And they were put up just after the war really quickly. And it meant that the government could build

lots of houses and they were prefabbed in like a warehouse and then they were just put up on site.

But the problem is they developed like a concrete cancer, I believe it's called And the concrete

started rot rotting and it started to become very weak. And it meant that these houses couldn't get mortgages. And

in order to get a mortgage, they had to basically replace the outside of these walls. Then a long story

short um my parents sold the house to a housing association so I could continue to live here. And they

had to replace the walls in order for it to be mortgageable. Now then in replacing the walls this is

this is becoming a really Long story. To get to a point, we had loads of builders around at one

time. There were seven or eight builders here, a couple of decorators, and it was so busy, and it was

during the summer, so all the doors were open And, you know, I like to talk to people. So I

was up there talking to the builders, probably shouldn't have done. I was probably distracting them from their work majorly.

But this guy come in from two doors up, and he come in at the door and said, I want

you to move the van. And I said well why because we've got everybody here. You know, there isn't that

there's loads of room in the road um Give me a good reason. Just move the van. I said, no,

well, just give me a good reason. It's in the it's in the way on my gate.

And I said, well, you know, if you've got a good reason, we'll move it in a couple of hours.

But in order to move it, we gotta move several cars. So is it okay for just a couple of

hours? And it come to. It was two foot over his gate, you know, 24 inches over his gate. And

he just. He couldn't park exactly where he wanted to. So he was in my kitchen shouting and shouting at

me. And I remained calm and the people around me and all that. And I suppose I should remain calm

because the people around me were watching me. I don't know if I'd remain calm. And I just said, look,

we will move it in a couple of hours. And I did become a little bit um stubborn at this

point

I I was like, no, I'm not moving it now because you're coming in my home and you're shouting at

me. And I just remained calm and I let him talk. And in the end, he left. And we moved

the van a couple of hours later. And

a couple of people said to me, how did you remain calm? I was like, I don't know. I just

did. And

here's the thing.

But just remaining calm solved that argument quite easily. You know, he wasn't happy. He went away,

but it did not blow up into us falling out and having to live in the same road and never

speaking again. And here's the thing, if you can just pause. There's nothing wrong with being angry.

You should be angry. There's children starving in the world. There's people suffering. There's wars going on. There's

corruption going on. There's people that are homeless that don't need to be homeless.

You know, the difference between rich and poor is huge. We should be angry.

There's nothing wrong with being angry. It's not, Anger Is not the problem, but it's what we do with the

anger that is the problem.

It's what we do with it in the moment. And the thing is, we're very often angry because we're taking

it personally. And and this is where it's really interesting, where the the best general enters the mind of his

enemy instead of from your side of it, instead of looking at it as well. How dare you attack me

here? Get in their mind. See what they're saying. What what is their point Jun Po One of my teachers

says to me, has anybody ever made you angry? It's like, well, yeah.

Really? Have they? And I'm like, yeah, people have pissed me right off. He goes and he leans

in

And he asked me again, has anybody made you angry?

And I'm like, yes. He

said, okay, let me ask you again. And he slows down he says, has anybody ever made you

angry?

And then suddenly, well, no, I've chose to be angry.

I'm angry because I care. They didn't make me angry. I'm

choosing my reaction. I'm choosing my response. And

in doing that, I can choose how to respond to my anger. It's my anger, not theirs. They're angry. They're

having a go at me for something. That's their anger. Me, you know, whatever's arising in me is my

anger. Then I might be angry because they're not listening to me. I might be angry because they don't have

a point and they're wrong. But again, it's my anger.

And if we stop and realise that, both of us care. We may not care about the same thing, but

both of us care. The problem is, normally when we get angry, we stop listening. All of our other senses

shut down. Our reasonable mind switches off and our chimp mind. Our shoulders go up and we

arch ourselves and we're ready for a battle. You know how I'm gonna win this argument? It's just like when

you get into a relationship at first. In the first three months, you can call them a name. And it's

funny, you can say all these things and you can have these bantering arguments, and nobody takes it personally because

you're so high on endorphins of new love that it's okay. You know, they don't mean it. Give it a

four or five months in. Oh, different story. The endorphins are gone then, and they can say the slightest thing.

Did you leave the cup on the side? What? Are you accusing me of something? It's like, well, no, I'm

not accusing you but did you leave the cup there? Well, I might have done. Are you saying I'm lazy?

It's like, no, I'm

just fed up with picking up the cup and I just asked if it is you.

You know, you know the scenario. But how? What does mature anger look like a

Mature anger takes a step back. It's still angry. It still realizes that there's something here to be

that you deeply care about,

but it pauses and it waits upon the intuition to come up from further down below.

Instead of the mind jumping to a response, jumping to, I gotta win this. You know, this is a war

it's it doesn't It takes the war out of it. It's no longer a war. It's just, well, we both

care about something. It may not be the same thing.

Perhaps if I listen to them and then they'll listen to me.

So you could go through the phrase, you know, I'm angry because I care and I pause because I am

wise

you know I'm angry because I care and I pause because I'm wise. And

then allow a deeper, intuitive self a genuine, honest answer rather than just

jump into the same old triad of abuse or shouting or defensive

mechanisms. Whatever you normally. Your default jumping to is the mature one doesn't jump to that. The mature one

understands, it gets in there Enters the mind of the enemy.

You know, the best businessman serves the communal good. So you're looking at the good for both of you. Whoever

you're angry with, or whatever you're angry with now you could be angry with people that are dumping rubbish on

the beach. Good. I'm glad you're angry about it. You bloody well should be. It's annoying us humans no

better

but running around screaming about it, shouting about it, phoning your mum and moaning about it doesn't do anything. We

think it makes us feel a little bit better. And the more we moan about it. Putting on the Facebook

post, hey, and I'm guilty of this one. You know, if anybody's my friend on Facebook, you know, I do

this, you know, one of my default jump to, well, I'll share it on Facebook. I'll find my common tribe

that are angry about this same thing too. But

if you question why you're doing it, then you don't end up making things worse. You know, if you do

end up talking very quickly and making accusations or you get personal,

be wise and apologize quickly. As soon as you realise you jumped into that mode, apologize.

You know, the most perfect argument is when you can understand what they're saying. You

end up being able to help them to understand what you're saying, and you can immediately have a laugh over

a cup of coffee after and you can see yourself in the other person, that if you were them, you'd

be angry just like them.

And it may not be the same thing as you that you're angry about. For them, it may be the

parking space. For you, it may be world hunger. You know, we all have our different priorities.

I'm not here to judge someone else's priority, trust me. I just think what I'm angry about is bigger and

better than theirs.

Just, that's the reality. I always believe my anger is more worthy than somebody else's anger. Of course I

do. It's mine. I own it.

Just like most of the stuff I own, I think is better than. You know,

that's normal. That's part of who we are.

That's part of the small mind, human, small mind, ego. But there's an intuitive wisdom

that runs way deeper inside of you that is honest and genuine. And if,

when we're angry, we can just pause, recognise I'm angry because I care, and pause because you're,

you have a new skillful way, you have a new wise way of doing things.

Just by doing that, we don't throw more fuel on the fire. We don't make things worse. We

end up solving more problems than we end up creating. Very

often when we're angry, we create more problems you know especially the masculine side of the human race.

Human race. It's like as if we're getting somewhere, we ain't getting nowhere. But that's a different story.

That's a whole different podcast um but

there's only always a solution. You know, if you just look deep down and be honest and genuine and explain

why you're angry. You know, anger normally comes from fear. Fear comes from caring about something deeply.

You know, it all comes back to the caring. You

know, we've all had different life, different experiences, and immature anger lashes out it doesn't stop. It just

wants to win. It wants to beat the other person down, whether it's physically or whether it's

mentally or whatever way, they just want to win. Whereas mature anger says, well, I'm not worried about

winning, but I. But I do want to get over what I care about.

But in the meantime, I understand you care about something too. Perhaps we can both share what we care about

deeply and

from an honest and genuine place.

I hope that makes sense. I hope you it gives you an insight into what a more mature anger looks

like. Don't get rid of your anger. Use it, benefit from it. Let the world benefit from the fact that

you care deeply about something. You know the some of the biggest changes in the world, some of the most

amazing things in the world that we enjoy today come about because someone was once angry. They

might have been angry that, you know, there was an injustice, or they might have been angry that, you know,

they got a walk to a pay phone so they. They invented a phone or angry. The remote controls used

to have a cable that people used to fall across fall over across the front room. You know, someone was,

like, annoyed about this so they're inspired to go and invent a remote control. The world's changed by

anger and desire and drive and emotions.

Use them. Use them, but not in an immature way. Use them in a wisdom way to

drive the world forward. Drive yourself forward. No

longer no longer It's to get rid of the anger. It's

to embrace the anger. Embrace your anger. Embrace the fact that you care about something deeply. I'm

Steven Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms. And and in the next podcast, I'm talking about the story

in Hades about suffice us suffice us sis of us that's it sis of us And

about the way he was

condemned and his punishment was to push a rock up a hill and watch it roll down for the rest

of his life, for eternity. Not in the rest of his life, for eternity. So what did we learn from

that? What did we learn from this story? That's my next podcast um In the meantime, I'd like to thank

all my patrons. You really make a difference. And the people that support me on Facebook, thank you so, so

much. It makes a real big difference. When

I get that payout every month, it means I can improve something in the way of production or in the

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So there's a link in below if you want to donate or become a patron.

Thank you. Take care. Have an amazing week. I'm Steven Webb.