SIX STEPS TO FREEDOM AND

INTENTIONALRESPONSIVEN

I have found that fear, anger and irritation are like an

ESS
affliction, and a serious impediment to open

communication and healthy relationships of all kinds.

Discovering methods to deal with these challenging
emotions is essential in leading a healthy well-balanced,
harmonious life. It is important to realize that anger has
its own function, intelligence and logic and so we should
not entirely try to eradicate it. After much trial and
error, I have come up with my own practice for
regulating strong emotions and being patient and more
authentically responsive through these six steps to
mindful anger management and intentional
responsiveness. Spirituality can be the medicine for all
that afflicts us.

1. Recognizing:Notice with equanimity a familiar stimulus

which habitually pushes your hot buttons and triggers an
unfulfilling, retaliatory response such as harsh words or unfair
treatment, which might very well provoke retaliation in kind. Stop
for a moment, however brief, to breathe, reflect, and simply relax.

2. Recollecting:With remindfulness, remember the downsides

and disadvantages of returning hatred with hatred, anger with
anger, harm with harm. Buddha said, Hatred is not appeased by
hatred. Hatred is appeased only by love. And recollect the upside
the significant advantages of practicing patience, forbearance,
tolerance and stoic acceptance of karma and its repercussions. In
this second step, find and mine the sacred pause. Rest in it.
3. Refraining and restraining, through reframing: See things
through the others eyes/point of view; cultivating feelings of
genuine compassion for those who harm you, knowing that they are
merely sowing the seeds of their own unhappiness and bad karma.
Examine things from the others perspectives: turn this over like a
stone to see all sides, recognizing others suffering. To take it one
step further, practice recognizing the adversary or critic as a
teacher, a friend, an ally in helping us develop patience and
overcome unconscious, habitual, and unproductive reaction
patterns. The most difficult person or situation can become our
greatest teacher, our greatest opportunity.

4. Relinquishing:Give up habitual conditioned reactivity and let go

of impulsive urges in favor of more consciously chosen intelligent
responsiveness. Accept the fact that such urges arise, dont suppress
or indulge them. Let them be without acting on them and you will
find that they ultimately dissolve.
5. Reconditioningand deconditioning habitual reactivity through
remindfulness: Recall the entire situational dynamic you have now
reviewed, while refraining, relinquishing and reflecting on how little
it will matter in a few months and years; letting go of unwholesome
reaction patterns.
6. Responding appropriately, intelligently, consciously,
choicefullyproactively, rather than reactively: In some cases, this
may translate into doing nothing or in other cases responding with
equanimity; ultimately making wiser, more skillful decisions based
on conscious awareness and experience.
Article Source
https://lamasuryadasmarried.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/six-steps-to-f
reedom-and-intentional-responsiveness/