A story about Temper ControlOne day, after his son had once again flared up in anger, the father took the boy out to an old fence at the back of their property. There he presented his son with a hammer and a bag of nails. “Whenever you lose your temper, you must come out here and hammer a nail into this fence,” he said. So the son did this. But he didn’t like having to go all the way out to the back of the property and put his energy into hammering nails into the fence, so he started to control his temper. After a while, he was no longer having to go out to the fence at all, as he had now learnt to keep his anger under control. His father, seeing this, took his son out to the fence again, and told him that now he was doing so well controlling his temper, he had something else he wanted him to do. “Each time you feel like being angry, but control it, I want to you come out here and remove one nail from the fence, until they are all gone,” said the father. So the son did this. Once all the nails were gone, the father once more took his son to the fence. Together they looked at its scarred, nail-pitted surface, and the father said to his son “Each time you get angry at someone, what you says makes a scar – like the nails made holes in this fence. You may calm down and regret what you said. You may even apologize and try to make up, but the scars remain, just as the holes in this fence remain now that you’ve taken out all the nails. People are precious. Your friends, family and even strangers you have occasion to meet deserve to be treated with respect and kindness, just as you do. By controlling your anger, you do not scar them, but retain their affection and gain their kindness in return for yours.” Understanding yourself is just as important as understanding others.
Original author unknown
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