Listen to episode 467 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Self-Control: Letting Go of Anger, Hatred & Irritability. Edited and adapted from The Freedom of Life by Annie Payson Call.
Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. To get access to full transcripts and over 150 additional podcasts from our archive, please become our patron today by visiting LivingHour.org/patron. Thank you. Today’s reading was edited and adapted from The Freedom of Life by Annie Payson Call, published in 1905.
To most people self-control means the control of appearances and not the control of realities. This is a radical mistake, and must be corrected if we are to get a clear idea of self-control, and if we are to make a fair start in acquiring it as a permanent habit.
You are what you are by virtue of your own motives of thought and action, by virtue of what your mind is, what your will is, and what you are in the resultant combination of mind and will. You are not necessarily what you appear from the outside. If someone is ugly to you, and you want to knock them down, and refrain from doing so simply because of what others might think, your desire to knock that person down is still a part of yourself, and you have not controlled yourself until you are absolutely free from that desire.
So long as you feel hatred toward another, you are in bondage to your hatred; and if (for the sake of appearances) you do not act or speak from that hatred, you are none the less at its mercy, and it will find an outlet somewhere.