Learn ways to be non-violent
It doesn’t take much to learn how to be emotionally, verbally or even physically violent. Just watch television. Just watch how other people treat each other. Just listen to people’s conversations with each other. The closer you watch or listen, the more you will realize how violent, directly or indirectly, people can be.
It’s more difficult to learn how to be non-violent, since it is bucking the trend. You are being different by being your own person. You are not letting others shape your behavior.
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Being your own person is the most important factor in learning to be non-violent. You must discover who you are and what you want to be. You must recognize the potential violence in thoughts of self-talk like “I just have to get my way or else,” “I just can’t stand it,” or “I can’t let him/her get away with that.”
If you want to be non-violent, you can learn to do so by following these basic rules:
- Be aware of how you feel, at all times. Take your emotional temperature regularly. Recognize when you are feeling upset, challenged or stressed and do something constructive about it.
- Be completely responsible for taking care of yourself. If you feel upset, take a time-out. If you feel frustrated, stop whatever you are doing. If you feel angry at yourself or others, discover the true feelings that lie under the anger, such as disappointment, fear, anxiety, insecurity. Also, keep your focus on the present, something you can do something about, not the past which can’t be changed. If you are upset right now, you can choose to do something about it. Focusing on the anger of the past only makes you angrier.
- Whenever in doubt about how you feel, remove yourself from whatever situation you are in. It’s easier to look at yourself when you are away from the stress that is getting to you. Doing this also allows you to understand and meet your own needs better. If you find a place to be alone, you don’t have to deal with others at the moment and you can calm down and think more constructively.
- Never expect to control another person, even if you have good reasons for wanting them to do something. The only human being in the world you have any control over is yourself. The only rights you have are yours. Challenging or controlling someone else’s rights is a form of violence.
- Recognize violence in all its forms, emotional, verbal or physical. Be one step ahead of yourself and catch any violent thoughts in yourself before you act on them. It takes effort, but you can learn to do it. If you do, you will feel much better about yourself, others will likely feel much better about you, and you will be practising a non-violent way of living. Yes, it takes effort, but the results are worth it.
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