Remember this story when you become angry next time
By: Raghav Ojha
Tags: Growth Mindset, Self Improvement, Calm, Anger, Growth

Picture from freestocks.org of Pexels

This is the story of a small hot-tempered girl. She became angry every time about anything on anyone. When she became furious, she didn’t care about anyone in front of her at shouted anything that came into her brain. Sometimes she even threw a few things in anger. Her parents became very worried about her. They tried everything to stop this bad habit but failed.

In the end, her mother talked to her tuition teacher because she was the only person who was liked by the girl. The girl respected the teacher and did everything that she said. The teacher carefully listened to her mother and promised her mother that she will end the girl’s hot temper in some days.

On that day when the class started the teacher said: “ Today let’s play a game before studying.” The girl became very happy. Then the teacher took her to the back of the house. She said “The game is that whenever you feel anger, then you just have to come here and nail into this wall. Do this every day until the day comes when you didn’t nail on this wall. At the end of this challenge, I will give you your favorite chocolate.” She gave a box of nails with a hammer to the girl after saying so.

The girl did what the teacher said. Whenever she got frustrated or angry, she went to the back of the house and nailed that wall. As she was hot-tempered in nature, she had to nail the wall over 10 times on the first day. But every time she became angry, she had to go all the way to the back of the house and put in all that effort to nail the wall. She thought that she could control her anger with much less effort and energy than nailing the wall. The next day, the wall was nailed 8 times then 7 then 4 then 3, and the day came when the wall was not nailed anytime.

The next day she happily went to her teacher and told her proudly that she didn’t nail the wall. The teacher praised her and took her again to that nailed wall. She said, “This game is not over yet. Now the second part is that you have to take one nail out of this wall on the days on which you didn’t get frustrated or angry.” The girl did as her teacher said. She took out one nail on the days on which she didn’t become angry. But because there were a lot of nails, it took her almost 40 days to clear the wall. After clearing the wall she again happily went back to the teacher telling her that she cleared the wall. The teacher again took her to the wall and after seeing that wall was cleared she awarded the girl with her favorite chocolate. The girl was overjoyed.

Then the teacher asked the girl “Can you see something on this wall?” The girl said that there was nothing on that wall as all the nails were cleared. The teacher asked her again to observe the wall more closely. The girl said that she could see the marks of the nails on the wall.

Then the teacher said “Just like you can take out the nails from this nailed wall but you cannot remove those marks. The same thing happens when you become angry or frustrated at someone. Whenever you become angry at your parents, they feel immense pain. That pain leaves a long-lasting mark on them. You cannot remove those marks from them even if you feel sorry afterward and ask for their forgiveness.”

After listening to this the girl realized her mistake and started crying. She immediately ran back to her parents and promised that she would never become angry on them again. And from that day the girl completely changed and never became angry at anyone.