4 Steps to Inner Peace after an Angry Outburst – Part 1

You’ve done it again. Something hit you the wrong way and you blew your top. You said things you wish you could take back. Your emotions flip between hurt, anger, guilt, and regret until they all tangle together. Storm clouds linger. Is there hope for peaceful coexistence?

Yes, there is hope. It starts with finding inner peace yourself. Once you find peace, it’s much easier to reestablish the relationship with the other person. With four simple steps, peace can be yours.

1. Realize it isn’t always important to win a disagreement.

Whether the conflict is with a spouse, a neighbor, or boss, a week from now, how important will it be to have gotten your way in the issue? What about in a year? Ten years? In most instances, it won’t matter tomorrow, much less in ten years. Most of the time, the relationship is more important than the issue at hand.

A healthy relationship with a family member is important. While the boss may not seem valued as a friend, it’s nice to have a paycheck. Likewise, you can live without being best friends with a neighbor, but life is more pleasant when those close to you are friends—and it could be life-saving in a time of need. Most of the time, the relationship is more important.

Anger over trivial matters can destroy relationships that are ultimately important.

2. Identify the thing within you that caused you to react in anger.

Were you afraid? Hurt? Did you feel you were losing control? Not respected? Jealous? Guilty? Selfish? Trapped?

Many times, we overreact emotionally to a present situation because of a previous trauma. For instance, someone’s innocent words today can make me feel put down or disrespected because a bully taunted me in the third grade.

Recognizing emotional baggage helps diffuse it. Once you identify the emotion, you’ll often realize that you over-reacted in the current event. Even if the present circumstance is a valid personal attack, understanding yourself helps you move from being an overcharged emotional bundle to being able to reason more clearly.

3. Take personal responsibility.

Everybody has faults. However, when we’re angered, we focus on the other person’s faults, not our own. Recognizing your own fault in a conflict will move you toward peace.

Be honest with yourself. What did you do that could have triggered the other person? Did you have unspoken expectations? Did you listen to the other person and treat him/her with respect? Were you sensitive to his/her needs, or did you think only of yourself? Did you say or do things that were hurtful or controlling? Maybe you tried to control him/her. Admit to yourself if you contributed to the conflict.

Accepting personal responsibility will free you to understand the issues more clearly, freeing you to move on, and prepare you to be a peacemaker.

4. Forgive the other person for their offense.

In forgiving, you are saying that you will not hold their offense against them and make them suffer for what they’ve done. Forgiveness does not indicate that they are right in what they did or said. Neither does it release them from consequences that might follow. As you forgive, you are laying down the right to get even or make them hurt. You release them to God for Him to determine the proper retribution and the timing for it.

Choosing not to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick or die. It leads to bitterness, which simmers, leading to future anger and conflict.

When you forgive, you get rid of the poison. It releases you to move on. The only way to find true peace is to forgive.

Watch for Part 2: 4 Steps to Mend Broken Relationships

Fair peace becomes men

Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts.

Hatred Eats the Soul

Hatred eats the soul of the hater, not the hated.

Like a city that is broken into

Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.

One Simple Step to a Lasting, Happy Relationship

If the books and articles written on how to have a long, happy marriage were gathered in one place, they could fill a library. However, if the wisdom in all those words were brought down to the simplest component, it could be summed up in a word.

But there are two problems with that word. First, we don’t understand what it means. Second, it is too expensive for most of us. We aren’t willing to pay the price.

That one word is love. We use it every day and we think we know what it means, but our understanding is drawn from our culture. True love isn’t hearts, valentines, chocolates, teddy bears, and flowers—or even diamond rings.

Neither is it the flutter of your heart when someone special comes in the room. Nor is true love the feeling of joy and fulfillment that comes when you’ve found the person of your dreams. All those things are nice, and they may be expressions of love, but they don’t define what it is.

True love is costly. When you have true love, you place the needs and desires of the other person above your own. Love lays its life down for the other person—and that doesn’t mean just in times of great danger. On a daily basis, true love is concerned about the other person, not with self.

True love:

• Is patient and kind—even when the object of its love is slow, disagreeable, or unkind.
• Is humble, seeking to build up others rather than bragging about its own deeds.
• Doesn’t insist on its own way.
• Doesn’t think bad of others.
• Is always courteous.
• Is not irritable, resentful, or self-centered.
• Does not keep track of wrongs suffered.
• Doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.
• Is supportive in every situation.
• Believes and hopes for the best.
• Endures all things.
• Never fails. Like the Everready Bunny it keeps on keeping on, choosing others over self.

The love pictured in today’s culture is selfish, seeking self-fulfillment. True love is expensive because it asks us to die to self and put someone else first, seeking fulfillment for the other person. But the rewards are worth the sacrifice.

You want a Happy Relationship that will last into your elder years? The more you’re able to love someone with this type of love, the more love you will receive in return—leading to self-fulfillment and a long, happy relationship with the object of your love.

Expressing anger is a form

Expressing anger is a form of public littering.

A stone is heavy

A stone is heavy and the sand weighty, but the provocation of a fool is heavier than both of them.

You Decide

This morning I received a forwarded email with the following anecdote:

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet curtains that had been hung on his window. ‘I love it,’ he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait.”

‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ he replied. “It is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged but how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.”

Mr. Jones is right. And it works with people just as with rooms and body aches. If we decide in the morning to be grateful for the people that God puts in our lives—no matter how much we approve of some things they do—we will find it much easier to live with them in peace and joy. We don’t have to let others determine the quality of our day or the tone of our disposition.