How to Fight

From the back cover of the book: Many of us don’t know how to handle our strong emotions, and our perceptions can make us angry or fill us with despair. To see clearly, we must calm down and look deeply at the root of our anger. Thich Nhat Hanh shows how, when insight is born, we will be free.

“When someone says something unkind, you may want to retaliate right away. That is where the fight begins.”

How to Fight is a small but powerful book. It looks like an easy read with only 127 pages, but it is not to be read lightly or speedily. Ponder. Take notes. Reflect. And take action, if needed.

This pocket-sized book is a part of The Mindfulness Essentials series for beginners and seasoned practitioners. Thich Nhat Hanh instructs us exactly how to take good care of our suffering (anger, frustration, despair, and delusion) so that we can help others do the same.

Here are some important points that resonated with me:

• Listen to ourselves (p.25): Our own strong emotions and thoughts are so loud in our heart and in our head, crying out for our attention, that we can’t hear the other person. Before we listen to another, we need to spend time listening to ourselves.

• Listen to others compassionately (p.26): If you can maintain the energy of mindfulness and compassion in your heart while listening, you will be protected, and no matter what the other person says, it won’t touch off the energy of irritation and anger in you. […] You no longer look at that person with suspicion, anger, or fear.

• Use loving speech (p.28): Once we have listened with compassion, we can use loving speech to restore communication and understanding. […] We practice to calm ourselves before we express what is in our heart, and we choose our words carefully so the other person can accept what we say and can understand us better.

• Don’t rehearse our anger (p.46): […] it may seem safe to hit a pillow, because it’s not a person or an animal. But doing this will water the seed of anger in your unconscious mind. By rehearsing our anger we are creating the habit of being angry, which can be dangerous and destructive.

This one is perhaps my favorite (take care of our own feelings first; calm down first):

“It’s like someone whose house is on fire running after the person who has set fire to their house instead of going home to put out the flames. If we don’t go home to take care of our anger, our whole house will burn down.”

I recommend it!