Scilla Elworthy Quote on Controlling Anger (Rather Than Letting It Control You)

“Anger is like gasoline.  If you spray it around and somebody lights a match you’ve got an inferno.  [But] if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.”

Scilla Elworthy

Beyond the Quote (Day 9)

I got really angry tonight.  In an effort to save your time (and save myself from getting worked up again) I’ll spare you the details.  Long story short I’m experiencing really frustrating car issues and really frustrating customer service.

After having been in the shop for over 2 months, I finally got a call that my car was driving “like-new” and was ready to be picked up.  I paid my dues, signed all of the paperwork, got into my car and noticed immediately that something was still wrong.  After getting attitude from the service reps that “the check engine light wasn’t on so it must be fine,” one of them decided to test drive it and ended up agreeing with me that something was, in fact, still wrong.  They kept my car again and I left.

It was in the minutes that followed that I started to feel really angry.  I felt an excessive amount of energy build.  I felt jittery and anxious.  I felt like I wanted to explode.  This was the gasoline that I was filling myself up with.  If you’ve ever felt this way before, then you know how overwhelming it can feel—and you know how hard it is to avoid.  You also probably know that it’s what happens next that makes all of the difference.

The first option is to hold onto the gasoline.  This isn’t any better of an idea than holding onto poison.  The second option is to spew the gasoline out over all of the people and things around you.  The consequences of this are obvious and, of course, the scare is that this may result in an inferno—one spark isn’t hard to come by.  The third option is to take that gasoline and channel it by putting it all into your engine and using it to move you forward.

I’m sure you’re all well aware of what spewing looks like, but what does channeling look like?  For me, channeling looked like really intense exercise, followed by really intense sauna, followed by a really hot shower, and concluded with me writing this post that you’re reading now.  Channeling for you might look similar or completely different.  What’s important is that you’re able to identify when you’re feeling angry and you have an idea of what to do when it happens.  Because it will happen.  And the best I think we can do, is not to avoid it, suppress it, or deny it—but to use it. Because otherwise it will definitely use us.

In a Tweet:

Anger is like gasoline. With that you have 3 options:

1) Hold onto it (and hope nobody lights a match near you)

2) Spew it out on everyone & everything around you (and let them worry about matches)

3) Channel it by putting it into your engine (and lighting the match yourself)

— Matthew Hogan (@MattHogan123) January 12, 2021

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