Day 328: On Anger

第328天：关于愤怒

If you don’t want to be cantankerous, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which you don’t get mad.

如果你不想变得脾气暴躁，就不要助长自己的脾气，也不要增加愤怒的次数。

压制住第一次发怒的冲动，然后开始计算不发怒的日子。

—Epictetus

Anger — or any other emotion that leads to impulsive decisions that you later regret — is an enemy of self-discipline. While it’s not always possible to catch yourself feeling angry before it converts into a full-blown attack of rage, whenever you can, act quickly and suppress the anger instead of feeding it. Anger that compounds on itself will quickly take away any remnants of self-control that you may have.

愤怒——或者任何其他会导致冲动决策、事后让你后悔的情绪——是自律的大敌。

虽然并不是每次都能在愤怒转化为全面暴怒之前抓住自己的情绪，但只要有可能，就应迅速采取行动，压制住它，而不是助长它。

愤怒如果不断累积，很快就可能夺走你仅存的微弱的自制力。

For example, when I’m stuck in a traffic jam, annoyed at other drivers or at the traffic lights seeming to take hours to change, I try to redirect my growing anger into another emotion, stop myself from cursing, or at least try to curse in a humorous way that won’t feed my frustration. That way, I prevent my anger from taking control of the situation. It’s a simple technique, but don’t let it fool you — it’s one of the most effective strategies to overcome attacks of unnecessary anger.

例如，当我被堵在路上，对其他司机或似乎要花好几个小时才变换的交通信号灯感到恼火时，我会试着把不断增长的愤怒转化为另一种情绪，防止自己去骂人，或者至少尝试用一种幽默的方式骂人，这样就不会加剧我的沮丧。

这样，我就能防止被愤怒控制局面。

这只是一个简单的技巧，但别被它的简单所迷惑——这是克服不必要的愤怒发作最有效的策略之一。

If you want to eliminate frequent attacks of anger from your life, begin counting the days on which you successfully suppress the first impulse to be angry. After a 7-day winning streak, you won’t want to lose all of your progress because of such a trivial thing as another driver driving too slowly or things temporarily not going your way .

如果你想消除生活中经常出现的愤怒情绪，那就开始计算你成功压制住第一次愤怒冲动后的天数。

在连胜 7 天之后，你不会希望因为另一个司机开得太慢或事情暂时不顺心这样的小事而失去所有的进步。

Will this strategy always work? Obviously not. Everyone gets angry from time to time. However, if you make a conscious effort not to feed your temper, you’ll reprogram your default behavior, greatly reduce the frequency of losing your temper, and gain better control over your emotional state.

这个策略总是有效吗？

显然不是。

每个人都会时不时地生气。

然而，如果你有意识地努力不纵容自己的脾气，你将重新设定自己的默认行为，大大降低发脾气的频率，并能够更好地控制自己的情绪状态。