Do You Take Offense To This?

Many people spend a good portion of their time filled with anger over things they find offensive. It's futile and a huge waste of time to let another human being stir up emotions in you that strong.

There is a great quote that sets the stage for handling things that you find offensive and it was said a long, long time ago by one Mr. Abraham Lincoln, ""We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it." Those are words to live by and if you choose to do so, will save you a lot of grief.

If someone is trying to pull your emotional strings and get a rise out of you by doing something they know you feel offended by or they want to anger you at another person by raising those same feelings; step back and see that behavior exactly for what it is: control.

By getting angry on someone else's cue, you are giving them control over your emotions; do you really want someone else controlling how you feel? Of course not. The best way to handle people who use this tactic in your life is to answer their attempt at control with a reassertion of yourself as the superior person who won't be drawn in. Tell them, "You must feel really strongly to keep bringing this subject up" or "I'm sorry that So-and-So's beliefs upset you so."

Do you see what you did? In both instances you gave the problem of being offended to the other person, removed the negativity from yourself and made it their problem, not yours. Don't debate your stance, continue to make that persons offended feelings their own and not yours.

The only emotion you should feel that strongly for another person is love and by confronting anything negative that is entering or attempting to enter your life, it will allow you to radiate your inner positivity and repel the negativity from all around yourself.
 posted by Friends of Leah