Re: G: Gift, Giving, and Growth
The thing that probably did the most for my peace of mind, when other people are giving me anger, was the realisation that we tend to assign internal motives to others - i.e. they're just a nasty person - but external conditions to ourselves - i.e. we had a bad day. Now, when someone's angry, I try to think of external conditions that might have made them that way, and that tends to make it less of a concern.
As to my own side of things, I find anger can only really exist when I'm taking someone very lightly, to the point where I'm not really concentrating on what I'm doing. The minute you want to throw a proper strike, or avoid one, anger goes right out the window. Just no time for it, too distracting.
It's similar with discussions. When you're having a good discussion, you're paying too much attention to the facts and the logical structures to be too offended by it. And if you're not having a good discussion - why are you talking?
Sometimes you have grievances - but again, it's a lot more productive if you put those down to external conditions. Maybe the other person doesn't have all the facts, or maybe there's some constraint on their behaviour. If there is a genuine conflict of interests then at least you can talk about that without thinking they're just doing it because they hate you.
Generally, life's very hard if you're intent on taking everything personally. Anger's just a rather nasty thing to walk around with. I don't want to be unhappy, so I try to run through more productive lines of behaviour first.