So many times, the behaviour of adaptation comes when in a Rage Club. Why is that? Why do we accept such insane things such as saying yes when it's a no? We don't give a genuine 'yes' to the things we do, as if we were slaves to our own unconscious prisons and persecutors.
"Say yes for no reason when someone proposes you random things, that's the practice for now", I said.
- Why? she asked.
- Don't you think we are busy adapting to others and trying to please them instead of revealing who we are?' I answered.
- Yes!" With anger in her voice.
"Well, here we experience the consequences of what it means to say yes, even when we don't want to!" That was the start of the Rage Club intro.
One participant gave me an answer: "When I say yes, I'm committing. I can't say no anymore."
-"Why can't you say no afterwards and negotiate?
- Because a yes is a yes.
- It seems to me that your 'yes' is a surrender, and that once you say 'yes', you're trapped in a tunnel.
- "Yes!"
"Here, we practice Radical Honesty, so it starts with acknowledging the 'yeses' in your life that aren't actually real."
What happened to your genuine impulses?
When I don't speak up, when my uncle makes a disparaging joke, or when someone else is very late for an appointment and I'm seething inside but pretending it's OK, then I absorb that information into my cells and become complicit in what happened by suppressing my impulses.
My impulses? "I don't want those kinds of jokes because they silence people!'"or "Why didn't you tell me you were going to be late?"
Alternatively, I might have chosen to end the conversation or go elsewhere instead of waiting.
But no.
Then the anger returns, accompanied by shouting voices from the subconscious, asking, "Are you OK with what that joke does to everyone? Are you really OK with people arriving 20 minutes late?"
As humans, we are mostly afraid of conflict. We then internalise it, fighting our own impulses. Frustration, irritation and rumination become the norm. It's the fate we all consume.
Isn't that crazy?
If you spend all our time repressing your impulses to speak up, take risks, act, love and create, then you are doomed to get lost in the labyrinth of our ongoing thoughts about the pros and cons.
But life isn't an Excel spreadsheet.
You are not an Excel spreadsheet.
(Yes, you're still hesitating because new data is constantly coming into your brain.)
Measuring things doesn't give you the power to negotiate ongoingly. Therefore, you need to be alive with your real 'yes's.
Yes to anger (never mind what you call it: irritation or determination — it's a scale of anger).
Welcome to your life!
Welcome to the Rage Club and rage for your life!
