{"id":583,"date":"2013-04-30T14:18:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/?p=583"},"modified":"2013-04-30T14:18:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:18:34","slug":"your-venting-doesnt-seem-to-be-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/2013\/your-venting-doesnt-seem-to-be-working","title":{"rendered":"Your Venting Doesn’t Seem To Be Working"},"content":{"rendered":"
Just today I was looking at Tweets from students I lovingly try to disciple and there was one overwhelmingly common thread: These students were all incredibly angry. Not just a bit upset. There were curse words aimed at life, aimed at people, aimed at the sky. Blame was being hurled, frustration was being spewed, and trash-talking was present too. It was too much to take in without commenting on. And so I like to think that this is my chance to write back in more than 140 characters to each of these students to ask an important question about their venting: \u201cIs it working?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let\u2019s start off with a much larger perspective and back away from all the specific details for right now. Let\u2019s not go to what your sister said or did or what happened at school that ticked you off. Let\u2019s get to what you want from life. Do you want to be happy or sad? Do you want to feel content or grumpy? We\u2019re going to have problems in life, all of us will. But would you like to have more of them or less? And would you like to grow from them so they happen less frequently or repeat them as often as possible?<\/p>\n Now I imagine that it seems like a waste of time to ask those questions. I mean, except for the incredibly dark student with heavy eye-liner who says that they want to be sad, feel grumpy, and doesn\u2019t mind having problems, I think we all know what the answers should <\/i>be. Should be. We should<\/i> want to be happy, feel content, and learn from life\u2019s problems so we experience them less. And this brings us to the problem with the way we handle life\u2019s challenges so often…<\/p>\n The idea goes something like this: I\u2019m ticked. So I\u2019m going to get this off my chest, vent a little, and express my anger to the world around me.<\/em><\/p>\n