S01E17 – Anger Management – Part 2
Date:
Channel: Muslim Life Hackers
Series: Muslim Life Hackers - Season 1
File Size: 10.76MB
Episode Notes
Maheen discusses how anger a seemingly normal emotion can eat up and destroy our lives. How is it this one emotion takes control or our character?
This podcast includes a recap on ‘Anger Management – Part 1‘ and goes on to discuss strategies to help get our anger under control.
In this episode you will learn:
– Why it is important to know about anger
– How we express anger
– 6 strategies to combat your anger
Episode Transcript ©
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Episode 17 Welcome to the Muslim life hackers podcast, the weekly podcast providing you with tips and tricks on how to hack your life and maximize its potential. And now for your hosts Mithra maroof and Mahima Lake
across the sea, that so much as I'm like overstay my packets, this is before marriage here with the 17th episode of the Muslim life hackers podcast. In this episode maheen will be speaking to us about anger management strategies of how to overcome your anger. This episode, as you know, is the second part of a series that we made, we did have a podcast at the start called anger management, part one. And in that particular episode maheen discussed about some of the ways we suppress anger. So in this one, it should be a much more practical and things that you can take out of it and start implementing it and implementing it into your day to day life. Let's get started with this, a
maheen. For those who didn't hear the first part of this anger management series that we had a podcast about. Can you explain to us Yeah, sure. Last week, we spoke about like, what anger is, and like, ways in which people will naturally express their anger. So we kind of like give a little definition what what is anger, and we said, quote, an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage now, like all of us experienced anger from time to time, and it's a normal commonly experienced emotion. However, anger can be incredibly destructive. When it's, of course, it's not justified. And if we don't know how to control it, it can just really take
control of our lives, and rule it in a way that it's not practical, and it's not progressive for us. Like in this podcast, we're going to be combating the act, not commenting.
On my comment, we're gonna be talking about strategies on how to tackle that anger that we don't want to be expressing the anger that gets out of hand, the anger that gets on hand. Last week, we talked about anger, where it's justified, for example, and injustice has been done to you. Or maybe someone said something hurtful to you and make you feel anger. And it's perfectly fine. I mean, but this is about like anger when you know, someone cuts in front of you, or you're driving and you're just like throwing things like a coffee cup or something. On a side note, my road rage has gone down a little bit. So let me just talking about it has helped a little bit of knowledge empowers Yeah,
knowledge, knowledge and action, I have to say, yeah, so I'm also what I was want to mention in this podcast is how different things make different people angry. For example, for me, it might be traffic just really annoys me could be like, something someone says to you know that for different people, you might find something else makes you angry, angry, then somebody else. Somebody else. Yeah, yeah. So just be aware of this. Don't think that, you know, anger can only come from one avenue, it can come in many different forms, through many different ways. So many different things can pretty much just trigger it. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so what were the ways that people actually
express their anger? Because you know that you covered it in last week's episode, which is like a quick overview of that, oh, what other types in? Like, how, how exactly, do we express that anger? Okay, great question. So last week, we spoke about three ways that people naturally express their anger, the first way was called expressing not very creative name. But this is how people just when they feel angry, they let people know that look, I'm angry about something, it's gonna be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which way you naturally lean towards. The second way was suppressing. This is when people when they find that they're angry, they kind of like hold it in,
and they don't let other people know about it. Again, this can be kind of positive and negative. Depending on your natural inclination. Literally, people naturally express their anger is through calming down. So they take on methods in which they try and restrain themselves kind of like talk them out of it, do some breathing exercises, that kind of thing. Yeah. So there are three ways people express the anger naturally, and in this podcast, we're going to be talking about strategies, strategies, okay. Maybe like these three ways that you're naturally expressing your anger isn't really working for you maybe like losing a few friends.
It's time to time to take some drastic action. Not too drastic, obviously. Yeah. Okay. So what exactly are the strategies that we can take in order to control anger from getting out of Candide losing those friends? Yeah, well, no one wants to be friendless.
Okay, so the first strategy, the first strategy that I want to talk about is acknowledging now this sounds pretty wishy washy, and I know like, I know you guys might be rolling your eyes like acknowledging Yeah, whatever. But sometimes people just don't know that they're angry. Yeah, like you've been flying off the handle and someone is like crying like why are you crying like she's just going off for me Why is angry? You need to know that the state that you're in
Getting out of control. You need to when you find yourself like in this rage, fuming and things like that, say to yourself, hey, look, self, look mine. Look, we're angry right now. And this has a profound impact on what comes afterwards. If you don't acknowledge that you're angry, the actions that you take after that point, could be totally skewed. When you know that you're angry, you're more conscious of what you're doing, how you're saying things, and you're more aware of your impression that others take care of you. Okay, so pretty much that acknowledging patches, being aware of yourself, yeah, being aware, I can be like, Hey, you know, this is this is going to get out
of hand, I should stop. Whatever I'm going to be doing next. Yeah, true. Seems like a very trivial point, but very important. Absolutely. Okay, so strategy number two is seek refuge in Allah from shaken. And this is a very simple technique that many of us tend to overlook. This is because like, often we find that we separate matters, about Ababa, from our day to day life. For example, we have like this kind of like Muslim hat, like where we put it on certain times a day, like when we're praying, that's when we have a connection with Allah. But when we're like driving to work, or saying we're having conversation with our friends, we tend to take off this like, Muslim Muslim hats. Yeah,
and be in a kind of different state of mind. And really, it's about nurturing the state of God consciousness, God consciousness all the time. And a simple statement like Oh, the relay ministry, honor the gym, when in a state of anger can really help you put a great habit and establishing a bond between you and Allah. In times when often we don't think of Allah like when we're in this fuming, fuming rage. Yeah, yeah. And it's a really great habit to implement. And it can do wonders for your rage in the moment. And I just want to mention it had this in relation to this narrated by Solomon Binstock, he says, He says, I was sitting with the Prophet, peace be upon him when two men
been slandering one another. One of them was red in the face, and the veins on his neck was standing out. The Prophet, peace be upon him said, I know a word, which if he were to say it, what he feels would go away. And if you said, I seek refuge in Allah from the devil, what he feels would go away. And then another artist, the messenger, peace be upon him, says, If a man gets angry and says, I seek refuge general law, his anger will go away. This is just two versions of the of the headaches that we just mentioned. And really, it just shows that how, when we're in the screaming rage, if we just remind ourselves of Allah subhanho wa Taala obviously, the benefits are, like, so profound,
when anger will diffuse, we're able to think clearly once again. Yes, so this technique just really emphasizes that our last one felt like God is always watching us all the time. And if that's the case, if he's always watching us, then he's always there for us if we if we need his help, definitely, we definitely need his help when we lose that design.
Sorry, not lose the anger. When we lose our temper we need when we need his help because we by default, US creation of a human's mankind we've been created weak. And in this state of weakness, where we're like so vulnerable to going in you know, attacking people or doing nasty things strangling we need him by God's help with this weapon. So making making that prayer and obeying the words of like in a taking what what Prophet Muhammad my peace and blessings be upon him told us to do? This is Yeah, it's it's a really powerful technique to do. Yeah, definitely support but really profound. So what's the next one, the third strategy that I want to talk about is remaining silent.
Again, this is another one, it seems so simple, but we often need reminder of the simple things in life. There's some really great wisdom in remaining silent when we're angry. And I just want to talk about a story an incident that happened to me a while ago might have been like a year ago as a hobby. I do henna right just hit up patterns and stuff like that. And I got hired to do to run a henna stall at the school kind of fate school fair was like a fundraising things school night or raising funds for something or
basically the school had paid for me to be there for like a certain amount of hours. And a student parents and whoever would buy like coupons or vouchers and bring it to me at stamp them and I did the head to head on him and during like the middle of the night and must be like the middle of the night whatever. He left the night. No, obviously not like we're not talking about two o'clock in the morning or something. It must be like eight o'clock or something. Okay, yeah. Is that late night parties at school? So I don't think that'd be kind of weird. Yeah. Anyway, while doing like the handle on like the little kids hands, things like that. There was a line building up because
obviously Hannah is quite popular and everyone wants to get like pretty patterns of flowers in the hands, whatever. And there was a line building up and what had happened. While I was doing like the henna on like people's hands and things like that. There was an argument that
Break out between two mothers who are standing with their children in the line. I'd like to say that I'm pretty good, but whatever. So they were standing in the line. And they were arguing about who was going first. Yeah, it was a placement argument. And one of them was like, Look, my child was here first. She gets 100 on first, whatever. The mother was like, No, no, no, my child was here first. Can you see like where she's standing? She gets a Hannah first. And this was children fighting. And then the children were just like, What is going on? Like, this is so embarrassing, mom Be quiet.
That's not a good example. No, definitely not. Especially in a school environment, like, kids everywhere. And this argument is escalated to the point where one mother called the other so far, like, she went so far as to call her anonymous. I'm like, You're lying. I'm going to test him. I'm like testifying for God. I'm like, What is going on? This is just Hannah. It's not like why would you anyways? Yeah, so that's like, a classic example of anger gotten out of control? Yeah. Like if, if one of them had just remained silent, the other one wouldn't have been provoked. And I'm not saying who was right or wrong. At the end of the day, like I just, I was asking you guys to just
hold this up. I'm not doing enough for either of you. Like this is just ridiculous. And then they like if one of them had just remained silent. You wouldn't have that far like that was that lady was actually pushing the other one. And I'm like, What are you doing? Like, it just, it seems so ridiculous to me, like so bizarre, but I guess like when you're so fused, in that rage, you don't even know what you're saying. You don't realize your surroundings, that you're at a school and this kid?
Definitely heaviness of that statement? Yeah. Like when when we're angry, we tend to say things that we're going to regret later on. And this was destroyed was a classic example. I have to say, Yeah, actually reminds me of how how you saying about when we're angry, we say things, and we end up regretting it. It reminds me of a story myself. It wasn't a personal story. But it's a story that I heard in which like, there was a father and his son, and the father told his son looks on every time we get angry, go get a nail and nail it inside the fence. So So every time he got angry, he got the nail, and then he like, hammered, and inside the fence. So guessing it's like old wooden fences
getting. And then after that, after all these nails on the fence, the father told his son again, Look, son, every time you get angry, but you control your anger, then take out the nail from the fence. So he did that. So every time we got angry, took it out from the fence. And then you know what happened after like, all the nails got off the fence, the father of that boy said something very profound. He said, Look, you see all those fences, you see the expenses, even though the nails have been taken up the host to remain even if like, you know, you went and apologized to someone who made up with them and whatnot, those words that you said, You don't know that they can still linger
in some secrets. And inside their heart. Yeah. And not not only that, it's like, you can you can never like you know, fully erase the whole damage that was caused as a result. Because he, you know, even like, as Muslims have, we're taught to forgive and things like that. But the thing is, like, sometimes like, you may say something, and he can just like, totally get you in a situation that you can't reverse. Like they say, like, respect is very hard to gain. But it's very easy to lose. Yeah. It's in these moments of anger, which you say something, you you put that nail inside the bin. And then we end up taking your off and apologizing as much as times as you want. Well, you never know.
Like, you never know. You never know like them. The main thing that you can is that you don't know, the situation wouldn't have been the same as what it was before you got angry. Yeah. It's like that saying I'll forgive and forget. Like, you can always forgive someone. But the thoughts of like, what happened to you always remain kind of thing? Yeah, yes. Yeah. I think that's like really, really food food for thought and make making sure that words do matter. Yeah, words matter a lot. Absolutely. And I just want to, on the point on remaining silent, I want to Yeah, I just want to bring up another Hadith about this remaining silence. The Messenger of peace and blessings be upon
him. He said, If any of you becomes angry, let him remain silent. And this is just another evidence to back up what we've been saying about remaining silent and obviously the benefits of it. Yes, sir. So this point about keeping silent when we get angry is in turn, like prophetic advice, which means that it's good
advice. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so, strategy number four that I want to talk about is change a physical step. Okay. I don't mean like when you're angry, like go into a yoga pose or something like that, like, oh, that might work. But
um, this also kind of ties into doing exercise and how like it releases like that anger and stress within yourself kind of thing. But we've all heard that ahaadeeth about
When you're angry, sit down. If that doesn't work, lie down and write that for you guys know, the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him. He said, If any of you becomes angry, and he's turned to him, and he's standing, let him sit down, so that his anger will go away. If it does not go away, let him lie down. Okay, so basically, this just goes to show that when we're angry, we, for example, I just saw my stupid argument that I witnessed between two girls, it was in my house as well. So what happened was, these two goes to having like having an argument, and they were standing up and one of the girls picked up a tissue box. It just threw it at the other girl. And I'm just like, oh.
And it just goes to show like, if they weren't, if she had changed her physical stance, if she was sitting, she wouldn't have been able to reach that tissue box and throw it. You thought you've got tissue boxes that I've actually read? through radio. Okay. That's quite heavy. Yeah. Yeah. So changing your physical stance, or when you find that you're getting angry at someone going for a walk, it has great benefits, like, first of all, you won't be able to attack the person if you're walking away. Second of all, you'll be able to reach for things like throw at them. Yeah. And it does a lot. It does a lot for your state of mind. Like, okay, I'm going to move now I'm going to do
something other than focus on this anger at hand. Yes. So this changing your body's position. It kind of distracts you from whatever it is fueling your anger to just change changes your physical state. So in turn, it has an effect on your mental state. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So that is totally number four. Change your physical states?
Definitely. What about strategies? Number Five? Okay, strategy number five is a pretty interesting one. It's called constructive, reconstructing. Now, it sounds a bit scary, but
I'm gonna walk through it. During my research on strategies on how to overcome, I kept coming across this whole strategy about how changing your mindset will help you overcome, like anger and things like that. Yeah. To simply put it this strategy means changing the way you think. And you people tend to curse were speaking highly cultural terms that reflect their inner thoughts. And when you're angry, angry, he you think he can get very exaggerated and overly dramatic, like, yeah, like, Oh, my God, this machine never works, I'm never gonna be able to traffic or my life is ruined, blah, blah, blah.
Like, Oh, my God, that lady pushed in front of me. This happened to me, you know, we all know like, we've all been in that situation. So what the strategy is aiming to do is, for example, try replacing these thoughts with ones that are more rational, for instance, instead of telling yourself, oh, it's awful, terrible, Everything's ruined. Tell yourself. Yeah, it's frustrating. And it's understandable that I'm sad about it. But at the end of the day, the world is not going to end and getting angry is not going to fix it. Being rational with yourself. It's it really diffuses the anger within you be careful of words, like never. And always, when you're talking about yourself or
someone like this whole, like all this machine never works on my computer never works. It really, it serves to justify your anger in a way and it just inflamed that even more. So try replacing these words with with with ones that are more rational, for example, this machine, it's not working at this time, but being angry at it, it's not gonna get me anywhere. I have to think about this rationally. And try and look for other ways on how to work around it. So pretty much the woods affect our mood. Yeah, definitely. Logic defeat anger. Yeah, so that was our strategy number five. Strategy number six is remind yourself of the high status of those who are stirring their anger.
Remember that mistreating their anger is a form of worship. And I'd like to mention a hadith on this. Good this point. Okay. So that that is what I want to mention is from the message of peace and blessings be upon him. He says, The Strongest Man is the one who, when he gets angry, and his face readings, and his hackles rise is able to defeat his anger. So really, this hadith really shows the point that you know, like, the strong person in terms of their character isn't the one who like, blows up and goes around punching people in a fury, but rather, they have the ability to restrain and this is also a form of worship, knowing that Allah Subhana Allah is watching us, and that we
need to always have this not always had this exemplary character that we're portraying to people. Yeah, it's definitely a form of worship, and know that ultimate Allah is like, he never missed anything and you putting effort in to restrain your anger. It's not going to go unnoticed. Yeah. That's the final strategy to sort of remember the high status for those people who stream their anger and know that your anger, your strain, your anger is a form of Ababa. Okay, so So how many strategies was that? That was six and five in case you weren't counting
strategies. Okay, so what what were the strategies if you would just sum it up? Okay, so let's just recap the strategies. First one was echnology. Okay, second one. second one was seeking refuge in Allah from the Shaitaan. Okay, the third was remaining silent. The fourth was changing your physical stance. Okay, remember that henna stole story? Yep. The first one was constructed, reconstructing, which is basically a fancy way of saying changing your thinking, okay. And the sixth point was remind yourself of the status of those who string that angle. Okay, so here's six really good strategies. And just as a final reminder, when you're, when you're thinking about restraining your
anger and strategies on how to overcome anger, don't think that you're restricting yourself. But rather, you're controlling yourself, you're mastering yourself. Don't think that because like, you're angry all the time, and you need to have these strategies in place. It's not that you're weak. It's rather that you're mastering yourself and don't think that, you know, this is this is something bad, you having to like, implement all these strategies and things that probably makes you better as a person. Yeah, a being able to master yourself. Yes, that's true. And we know that life is like a work in progress. Now, we always have areas to improve. I mean, for some, it might be
anger, for some, it might be something else. So never, ever think that everyone's test is different. Everyone's test is different differently. But here if that was some very, very useful tips that you've given us on how to can how to control that anger. That actually ends off today's podcast of strategies of managing anger, which is the anger management Part Two episode, as always, you can find our show notes at WWW dot Muslim life hackers.com slash 17. Also, if you want to ask your question, how do you listen to the Muslim life hackers podcast? Yeah. Are you listening to it on the web? Or are you using your web browser on your mobile phone? Because if that's the case, then we're
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