Short Tempered Peaceful Person

LittleAlly

That title is the perfect way to describe me.
I have an extremely short temper but I am peaceful and happy inside. I don't understand why it happens, it just does. I am trying to find a way through my Buddhist pursuits to permanently get rid of my short temper, but sometimes I find it difficult. How can I make this easier for myself?
Thanks so much!

ShiftPlusOne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

Meditate

Here's an interview with one of the leading researchers on emotional intelligence and meditation.
http://www.shareguide.com/Goleman.html

Daniel Goleman: Yes, and it might be a friend. We still have that brain mechanism from our ancestors, but now it can get us in trouble, because we live in a complex symbolic world and the amygdala is responding to perceived emergencies as though they were biological flags and it can pitch us into paralyzing fear, or rage, or high anxiety before we quite know what is going on. So the ability to pause and to not act on that first impulse has become a crucial emotional skill in modern lives.

Share Guide: Right. Still, people often have a tendency to jump to conclusions.

Daniel Goleman: Yes, you see it in marriage; you see it everywhere. This emotional skill is a universally useful ability, but it has to be learned because we aren't wired that way. The good news is that the brain is plastic throughout life--it is shaped through repeated training and experience. That means we can acquire emotional skills. Mindfulness is a good example--the ability to notice what is going on as it arises and to pause before we respond is a crucial emotional skill. Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.

Share Guide: I get that from practicing Tai Chi.

Daniel Goleman: Right. You can only do Tai Chi mindfully; it's like a walking meditation. In my new book, Destructive Emotions, I describe some very important new research on that subject by Richard Davidson, Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, who teamed up with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the mindfulness teacher. They taught an eight-week mindfulness program at a very high pressure biotech company. What they found was that 30 minutes a day of meditation for eight weeks enhanced the capacity of the brain to catch those impulses and pause, rather than react. It also shifted people's emotions into a more positive range. It made them work better. The program was very successful.

Share Guide: Would that be a seated meditation as compared to a walking meditation?

Daniel Goleman: Mindfulness is a meditation that can be done while seated, walking or during any activity.

Share Guide: So if you go for a tranquil half hour walk in the morning, rather than a seated meditation, to get mellowed out before your day hits you, that serves a similar purpose?

Dr. Goleman: Not necessarily, because meditation is mind training. If during the walk you daydream, you plan, you reminisce, you listen to some music on your Walkman, you are not training your mind at all. If during that time, however, you are more disciplined and pay close attention to what you are experiencing, like the wind on your face, the smells and what you see, and you don't let yourself get lost in thought, that is mindfulness training--bringing your mind back to the moment whenever it starts to wander. Then you are actually acquiring that mental skill. If you do that kind of a practice regularly, with discipline, and you do it daily, you actually begin to reshape the brain circuitry for emotions and for perception in quite a powerful and beneficial way. In fact, Professor Davidson, whom I mentioned earler, is now looking at Olympic-level meditators, like Tibetan lamas. He's discovered that when people are in the grip of a distressing emotion like anger or high anxiety, there is a lot of activity in the right pre-frontal cortex which is right behind the forehead. When people are feeling very upbeat, energized, happy, optimistic, there is a lot of activity in the left pre-frontal cortex. The ratio of left/right activity in a person's brain when they are at rest predicts quite accurately their mood range, day to day. Just like for IQ, there is a bell curve for this ratio. Most of us are in the middle. We have good days and we have bad days. If you are extremely far to the right side, you are probably clinically depressed or have an anxiety disorder. If you are very far to the left, then when you have a bad mood, it probably doesn't last long; you bounce right back. One day an old Tibetan lama wandered into the lab and they hooked him up. He got the highest reading to the left. By the way, when Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced mindfulness to that bio-tech company, the people there were tilted towards the right originally. By the end of eight weeks of mindfulness training they had tilted to the left. What Davidson suspects is that there was what's called the "dose response relationship." The more you do the practice, the more the brain changes in that direction.

... and so on.

Another article on the actual brain processes involved:
http://www.eubios.info/EJ141/ej141j.htm

Jason

LittleAlly wrote: »

That title is the perfect way to describe me.
I have an extremely short temper but I am peaceful and happy inside. I don't understand why it happens, it just does. I am trying to find a way through my Buddhist pursuits to permanently get rid of my short temper, but sometimes I find it difficult. How can I make this easier for myself?
Thanks so much!

Two things come to mind. First, try to set aside time to meditate each day, and specifically try to cultivate metta or loving-kindness. This will help to make you more mindful so you won't lose your temper as easily, as well as to give you an antidote for the anger itself. Second, try finding the gratification (the satisfaction of psychological need to which the anger caters) you get from being angry, even if you can't see it right away. This may make it easier to see the danger and the release in regard to the anger and what underlies it.

LittleAlly

Thanks so much :-)

Mountains

Meditate

GuyC

Hello LittleAlly,

All Buddhists (or anyone who wants to purify their minds) should attempt to practice the Noble Eightfold Path to the best of their ability. If practiced fully, this Path is all that is needed. While all 8 factors are important, there are 3 factors in particular which I think will benefit you greatly: Right Intention, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness.


There are 3 types of Right Intention:

1. Thoughts of kindness
2. Thoughts of non-harm
3. Thoughts of letting go

All 3 of these intentions, gradually, over time, should help to develop positive habits which will make your mind less short-tempered. These intentions won't develop by themselves, this is where Right Effort comes in...


There are 4 types of Right Effort:

1. Guarding against unarisen unwholesome mental states
2. Abandoning already arisen unwholesome mental states
3. Cultivating unarisen wholesome mental states
4. Maintaining already arisen wholesome mental states

So in brief, you guard against and abandon mental states which lead to a short-temper. You cultivate and maintain mental states such as patience, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, etc. But in order to do this you need to also develop an keen awareness of what your mind is up to. This is where Right Mindfulness comes in...


There are 4 types of Right Mindfulness:

1. Mindfulness of the body
2. Mindfulness of feelings
3. Mindfulness of the mind
4. Mindfulness of mind objects

The way to develop mindfulness (and Right Effort also), as others have suggested, is through the practice of meditation. At first it may seem like meditation is one thing, then "daily life" is another thing. But with practice, your mindfulness will increase and you will be able to see what your mind is up to both on and off the cushion. From my understanding, it is probably only Arahants (fully enlightened beings) who are mindful 24/7, so don't worry if your mindfulness is not that stable at first, it takes a lot of practice.

Try out different meditation techniques, find one that works for you and stick with it. Personally, I have found Ajahn Brahm's method to be pretty effective, so that is what I practice mostly. Here is a link to some guided meditations: http://www.dhammaloka.org.au/downloads/itemlist/category/25-half-hour.html

I wish you all the best on your Path.

With Metta,

Guy

TheJourney

I understand your frustration. By nature i'm the same way, but it's something i've worked on and would like to say have made a lot of progress with. For me I get frustrated when people don't understand things quickly. I lose my patience and I don't yell or anything but I get noticably frustrated. I always feel bad shortly after, but in the moment it's hard to stop. It still happens, but it takes a lot more now than it used to.