I find I can be easily irritated by other people. For example, I walked into a beautiful cafe for a quite coffee today to find a chap wearing a call centre type headset conducting his laptop business meeting loudly. Booming commercialism echoed a cross the cafe, his headphones made him very loud. Then I thought to myself, the guy is only trying to work, he doesn't mean to be so loud I'm sure, and my mind settled back down. My ears seemed to tune out and I felt peaceful again. It made me realise that inner peace is exactly that inner, removing the judgement from the external stimuli killed it's irritating power. It's a matter of mind, mind over matter, minding my own matters not somebody else's.

A car cut me up on the motorway slipping off the exit forcing me to brake, this was on Tuesday, naturally it instantly irritated me. . I have a brain trick of being able to replay the event from a third party perspective. Similar to it happening to another car in the distance. Watching it happening to another person takes away the irritation leaving behind a far less emotional and judgemental response.

As a note its never worth me, or even possible for me, to fight an instant anger emotion. Better to recognise it and then handle it. Mostly I shield my mind from becoming involved in external stimuli (irritants) and interacting emotionally with them. Eg, stop judging if I like or dislike sounds and sights around me.

I tried to put this judgement into effect last night too. I was removing our broken dishwasher and I had flooded the kitchen floor, I ran out of hands. I called my wife for help off the sofa, she said nope, I am resting. I initially thought yea nice, I would like to fucking rest but I need some bloody help. I understand her sentiment, but had the boot been on the other foot I would have got shouted at and a cold shoulder for at least the next day! I calmed down and carried on. Getting into a fight and angry is just counterproductive on so many levels isn't it. You never come out of an emotional fight and say to yourself that went well didn't it, or that has improved matters!

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