One of the most important techniques to calm down is having the power to hold on, even in demanding and hard situations, to a distinction between what someone does and what they meant to do.

Part of the reason for our pattern of imagining negative plots and thinking that all people want is to cause us harm is the psychological phenomenon called self-hatred.

The less we like ourselves, the more we appear in our own eyes as possible targets for disrespect and harm.

When we carry a baggage of self-hatred around with us (that operates outside of our awareness) we'll constantly seek confirmation from the outside world that we really are the worthless people we consider us to be.

This process starts in our childhood, when someone close to us left us feeling dirty and guilty. As a result, we are traveling through society and living our lives assuming the worst.

We would be much calmer around adults if we could act around them in the way we naturally act around children.

Small kids sometimes behave in really annoying ways, but we rarely feel personally wounded by their behavior, because we don't assign a negative intention to the way they act (quite the opposite, we find the most benevolent interpretations).

Motives are crucial, but sadly we are very bad at perceiving and interpreting the motives that happened to be involved in the events that most frustrate us.

We usually feel that other adults have something against us, that all the actions they are taking and that frustrate us have the intention to cause us distress, to take advantage of us.

He developed a formula for calming himself and his pupils down in the face of irritating people.

He said to never see people as evil; just try to identify what is driving a person to behave in negative ways. It is a calming thought to imagine that they’re suffering in a way we can’t see. Being mature means learning to imagine this area of pain even if you don't have enough evidence about it.