Someone very close to me, hurt me recently.  Big time.

It happens.  Sometimes the ones we love – and often the ones we don’t love wound us – they cause us pain.  And it bites.

I was seriously bruised.

I’d like to think that I handled the situation with grace, with loving kindness and with acceptance.  That would have been very “om” of me!

But no.  I didn’t.  I had all the tools in my toolbox to know how to deal with the pain and to let go of the hurt – but I deliberately chose to ignore them!!  I made the conscious decision to get mad…really mad…and to positively step into my anger!  It was not a good call!

When I’m in situations like this I often try and temper myself by asking:

“What would the Dalai Lama do?” “How would the Dalai Lama react?”

He’s my “go-to” guy for the inspiration on how I would truly love to live my life.

But even though I knew exactly what the Dalai Lama would do, I completely ignored his advice to my soul…and “not so quietly” seethed!!  It was far more fun and infinitely more satisfying throwing myself into the depths of drama and agitation than it was to quietly and calmly accept the situation, and to let it go.

But was it?

So, let me tell you what I did do – and how I badly I managed the situation…and then I can talk about what I wish I’d done…because the two were a long way apart!!

The first thing I did was call a few people – to justify my anger.  I mean, there’s no point being right in an argument unless other people know about it!  And I needed to be right.  I needed to feel that my grievances were vindicated!  Nothing like getting support on your side when you’ve been wronged!

Then I let the story continually go round and round in my head.  I massaged it, held it, cajoled it – I didn’t want to let it go.  Somehow there was something really satisfying in replaying the situation again and again and again.  I’m not sure why – the result never changed – but there was a comfort in hanging onto it.  Every time I thought the fire was dying down, I prodded the embers again…just to make sure I could still stoke up the anger!

I mean, I’d been wronged – I had good reason to be angry, right??

But I didn’t just hang onto the past story – I created a future one – a story of what I would say, how I’d react, what I needed to do, the finger pointing that was going to happen.  Man…this story was now consuming me – past, present and future!

But it was justified – I’d been mistreated!!  No wonder I was carrying on like a pork chop!

But carrying on I was.  I wanted to hold onto my anger – to my resentment and my frustration.  The emotions were like a warm, comforting coat that I didn’t want to take off.  It fitted perfectly, and I just didn’t want to let it go.

But…did “maintaining my rage” make me feel any better?  Not in the slightest.

Did knowing that I was right help the situation?  Not in the least.

Did refusing to let go of the story change it in any way?  Not at all.

Really?  So, what was the point??

The point – as always – was the learning.  I wish I’d handled the situation differently – but the first step to changing how we react, is catching ourselves – seeing out reactions and our emotions.  Once we catch our behaviour – it’s then a conscious choice as to how we change it.

And it’s always a choice.

In her book “My Stroke of Insight”, brain scientist Dr Jill Bolte Taylor teaches that emotional responses like anger, or fear, or frustration take less than 90 seconds to be triggered, to surge through our bodies and then be completely flushed out of our blood stream.

In less than 90 seconds, the chemical component of my anger has completely washed through my body and the automatic response is over.  If I stay angry, then it’s because I’ve chosen to stay angry.

I had consciously chosen to stay angry.  I wish I’d chosen differently! My ninety seconds lasted for days!

But our emotional experiences do more than just impact us mentally – they have the power to impact us physically as well.  The challenge with not letting my anger go immediately, was that I let negative emotion enter my energy field – I allowed it into my cellular makeup giving it the potential to encode into my biological system – aka – the potential to make me sick.

Internationally renowned medical intuitive Carolyn Myss – believes that:

“The human energy field is impacted by our experiences – both positive and negative. This emotional force influences the physical tissues within our bodies – which means our biography (the experiences that make up our lives) becomes our biology”

So – holding onto my negative emotions has the potential to impact my overall physical well being?  Damn – wish I’d chosen to let them go earlier!

And then there’s the famous question from Eckhart Tolle:

“Do you want peace, or do you want drama?”

In my life I actually wanted peace…who doesn’t?  But I was willing to trade peace for the drama of needing to be right.  And whilst being vindicated felt good for…oh…probably all of about 20 seconds…was it worth it?  No.  But I needed to learn that.

To make matters worse, I added to the drama by involving others.  Really??  What was I thinking??

Being in peace also meant remembering to be present.  I needed to let go of the stories – the ones I continued to tell myself from the past, and the ones I invented in the future!  I chose to let the stories overtake me and control me.  If I’d stayed present, they would have had no power over me.

Again – I had not chosen wisely!

But did “choosing peace over drama” mean I should have just walked away from something that had obviously caused me pain?  Should I just have accepted the situation with grace and acceptance and let it go?

Maybe.  Maybe that’s what the Dalai Lama would have done.

But sadly – I am not the Dalai Lama…

When I finally allowed myself to calm down – when I sat quietly to really understand how I’d let this get so out of control and out of proportion in my mind, I realised that I still had a point of view I needed to get across.  I still had a message that needed to be said.

But the difference – in finally finding some sanity with my emotions – was that the conversation would come from a very different place.  It would come from a position of love…it would come from a position of acceptance (finally!)…and it would come from a position of boundaries – setting boundaries to ensure unacceptable behaviour was exactly that – unacceptable.

It wasn’t what I chose to do so much – it was about how I chose to do it.

So, our emotions are a choice. We can’t choose the situations we find ourselves in…we can’t choose what happens to us or why….we can’t choose to always be in control…but we can choose how we respond.

And I for one, am looking to choose differently!  Just in case the Dalai Lama asks!