Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. I have a question for us today.

Sometimes when negative events happen, we can get really angry. It's amazing how intense we can get.

I remember the first time I drove to New York City and I was going to drive through the tunnel,

a whole bunch of cars converged on the tunnel and you had to go through a toll booth.

Well, there was this taxi in this other car that were vying for the same position and they kept honking in each other because the other person wouldn't move.

Finally, they got out of their cars and literally got in a fist fight,

just over who could get into the lane first.

Fear is another one of these intense emotions that we display sometimes.

It can be incredible how fearful we can be.

We can be fearful for our lives if we're given a bad lab report.

We can be fearful for our safety if we think we're going to lose our job. Fear can just

be such a powerful emotion. And yet, at times in these same situations, we can see people acting with true calmness and

equanimity in the exact same situation someone else may act with rage or

fear. Why is that? What's the difference between one being so upset and the other being

so calm? Why are we able to do both and what's happening here? It all has to do with what's called the ego or fixating on the self.

There are a lot of reasons we get angry, but the bottom line reason we get angry is because

we have identified with this person, call ourselves

Jane, Mary, Jack, whoever we may be listening to this podcast right now.

And we say this person is important, which we are.

But there's so much fixation on the self that it's about, well, because I am this person,

I'm definitely not going to let those other people out there take advantage of me. And they do I'm going to get them I'm

going to make sure they pay for it. It's a real fixation on me and so we get angry. It's the

...