“You know kids, nobody can ‘make you’ feel anything. – You do know that right?” (they look confused)And there follows an experiment, where the teenager tries to make Peggy (the Quaker preacher in the story) angry. And at the end, she reports:
“No, seriously,” I say, “ You can be, if you choose, in control of your feelings. Nobody can make you angry, nobody can make you sad, unless you want to be.”
They scoff, and without fail, one of them says, “My parents make me angry” – or even better - “I can make people angry”.
“I am feeling slightly amused, and proud of you, young man, you showed courage, you gave it a good try. You didn’t flinch. I respect that. I like you. – I am not, however, in the least bit angry.”And that is the "bingo" moment. A human can choose a particular reaction. We can get better at picking what we're going to feel or do.
Then I ask the class if they can figure out why he failed. They are smart. They [...] come around to “You didn’t want to be angry. You made up your mind that you weren’t going to get angry.”
Just because people are offensive does not mean that I have to be offended. What a time-saver....Read the rest, it's worth it.
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