Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Take from a bad encounter only what you need to get through it. Then stop, before it hardens into a rule about how things always are.
The mind wants to bank the lesson in the widest form it can: people are like this, that sort never changes, it always goes this way. That is how one afternoon turns into years of bracing. Keep the practical part, your read of that room and that person, and decline the general version. When a sentence in your head starts with always or never, cut it back down to this time.
Qur’an and Sunnah
it is He who made the night and day follow each other, so anyone who wishes may be mindful or show gratitude (Quran 25:62). Each turn of the day is offered as its own occasion, not as more evidence for a verdict you already reached.
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ خِلۡفَةࣰ لِّمَنۡ أَرَادَ أَن يَذَّكَّرَ أَوۡ أَرَادَ شُكُورࣰ ا
it is He who made the night and day follow each other- so anyone who wishes may be mindful or show gratitude
Qur’an 25:62read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a controlled experiment, a brief attention training exercise improved children's ability to delay gratification, which is evidence that attentional flexibility can be trained rather than being fixed. Where attention goes next is a skill. The study was with children and about waiting, so the link to unlearning a hostile rule is by argument rather than by direct test.
Murray J, Theakston A, Wells A. (2016). Can the attention training technique turn one marshmallow into two? Improving children's ability to delay gratification.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Lessons learned under threat spread much wider than the situation that taught them, so the useful step is trimming them back.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Change the question you ask yourself. Not how badly do I want to stay calm, but what have I actually practised for the moment it starts.
A raised voice at home gets heard as disrespect long before anyone checks. Sometimes the person simply cannot hear how loud they are over their headphones.
Practising the perfect reply in your head feels like letting off steam. It works more like rehearsal, and what you rehearse gets easier to perform.