Go Ahead and Be Angry

Transcript

Let’s talk about this idea, go ahead and be angry.

I was thinking about a conversation I was having with my friend from Colombia. Hello to my friends from Colombia!

She was talking about this thing, a lot of Colombians have this problem or hangup and its because so many people have this conception of Colombia that it’s a place with drugs, beautiful women, plastic surgery and sex workers. The conception that a lot of people have of sex and drug tourism.

A lot of people have those ideas about Colombia and Pablo Escobar. You know the thing I’m talking about.

Of course Colombia is an amazing country with a lot of natural beauty like the river of five colors and there’s all these beautiful waterfalls, mountains and other things. Cultural aspects, culinary offerings of the country.

Of course when you don’t have personal experience of a country, things are going to be reduced to a rumor or stereotype.

My friend was getting angry as Colombians often do like “how could they think that about our country?! People are just so ignorant.”

And it’s true, people are ignorant, go ahead and be angry about this. I’m teasing her because she has that control, she can decide to not be angry.

She knows people have this stereotype in advance. Why is she so angry about it?

I told her to go ahead and be angry about it because obviously you know these things in advance and you’re still deciding to get bothered.

I think it’s important to make this distinction between what is reasonable and what people “should” do, what people actually do or what is realistic.

For example if you work in an office and your colleague comes in 20 minutes late every day and it causes a disturbance for the rest of us. Maybe you get angry every time that happens.

Is it reasonable to expect that someone will turn up on time? Yes it’s reasonable, they should do that. But if they actually have that as a belief that people should or must do things, things outside of our control should or must happens. What usually happens as a result is that sort of thing is gonna happen and we get angry because we have this expectation.

What’s really realistic? It’s realistic to expect that some people will come in late to their job or that they’ll occasionally misunderstand the requirements of a project or assignment or something similar. This happens all the time, it’s perfectly realistic to expect that to happen occasionally.

Likewise with my friends in Colombia, it’s realistic to anticipate that people are going to have these preconceptions of what is really a beautiful country and even sometimes it goes beyond that, it’s a bit extreme.

Colombians are so wired up about it that they actually they spread the stereotype. There was a cartoonist going around Columbia and exploring and he drew these pictures, kind of like stereotypes. But they were pictures of women he was seeing in Bogota and other parts of Columbia and people would comment on his pictures.

He was just trying to document what he saw and make a record of his experience and express himself. It’s not like they’re offensive or take people down, he’s just trying to be creative and people would comment and say “You’re just like the rest of them, these sex tourists. All you do is come to Colombia to look at beautiful women and do drugs.”

That wasn’t the case at all.

Sometimes when we have such strong beliefs or expectations it causes the opposite. We are so worried that people will do this that we cause people to have the perception that something comes up, something is contrary to our expectations and we feel frustrated or angry or upset we can ask this question: What is realistic?

It’s not realistic for someone to be perfect all the time to comply with out expectations all the time or even obligations all the time.

It is realistic to expect things will not go according to plan. People have different ways of moving through the world, we can account for that and be as a result more peaceful.

So why be angry when you can enjoy your personal peace.

Thank you for paying attention and noticing your own expectations and noticing when they are thwarted and when you become angry and when you have an opportunity for greater peace and most importantly have a wonderful day.