I’ve followed Eric Barker for years. He scours the literature for tips on how to navigate through life.  His recent post is how to deal with anger. Here is an excerpt:

Take a second to be honest with yourself when you’re angry and you’ll often find one of three beliefs is beneath your thinking:

• • I must achieve perfection or I’m a failure and a horrible person.
  • People must treat me as I wish, or else they are horrible and deserve severe punishment
  • Life must be fair and easy. Otherwise, it’s intolerable.

What do they all have in common? Yes, they’re all unrealistic. They all also contain the word “must.” It’s just as bad as “should.” Every “must”, “should”, and “ought” is a landmine waiting to be tread upon.

They all imply you have control over things you don’t have control over. I greatly appreciate you feeling responsible for maintaining justice in the universe but you haven’t been granted the power to enforce it and that fact is now driving you insane. Do you have an enemy here? Yes. Yourself.