A wise person once told us that “One way or another you always pay for your own education.”

Most often for many of us, those lessons come at the price of paying for our mistakes, our misjudgments or simply for doing things even when we know better.

Yesterday was a day of great learning for me.

You see, something happened yesterday which is extremely rare for me, I got angry.

Not just angry, but furious. Seething. Actually in the moment, it was the kind of anger that I’m sure many have experienced where common sense and rational thoughts shrivel up and shrink their way out of your body and move far beyond your grasp.

I mean the kind of anger where you lose track of all the good choices and focus only on the poor, pathetic one’s that are left. Even more unfortunate is when that happens and those poor, pathetic choices sadly makes sense and disguise themselves as good choices.

The cause of my anger is not pertinent to the story. What is relevant is that I know better, I am better and I was extremely disappointed in myself for not doing and being better. They say “Knowledge is power.” It isn’t. Power comes not from what we know, it comes from what we do with what we know.

Genius that I am, I proved that yesterday.

Fortunately a beautiful angel – my wife Gimalle – came to my rescue and helped me dissolve my petulant anger and replace it with a sense of amusement and, I should add in the interests of open and honest conversation, a sense of disappointment in myself.

In allowing the anger to find a pathway to my soul, I violated so much of what I believe to be true, what I talk about my workshops and training programs and what I write about. I allowed myself to become the victim of a cause and effect relationship that didn’t exist.

What I mean is I allowed myself to be affected by, and to blame my anger on, the very thing that happened. I told myself that the thing that happened was the cause of my anger and in so doing, as we have so often discussed, I made myself the victim – the helpless victim – and victims, as we all know, always remain victims for as long as they believe that the few choices they think are available to them are the only choices available to them.

Gimalle lectured (my word, not hers) me in a way I needed to be lectured to in the moment, meaning she didn’t allow me to speak (I should be used to that after 19 years), she wouldn’t let me interrupt (she hasn’t gotten used to me doing that even after 19 years) and forced me in the most loving and supportive way to separate my anger from the event, and replace my anger with laughter by placing a new and different meaning on the event.

Friday night is date night for us and, as has been our tradition for many years, we go out for dinner, discuss how the week has been, and generally enjoy each other’s company.

As we were walking home Gimalle looked at me with the “I told you so” look on her face that every husband lives in fear of seeing because there is no plausible rebuttal, gently smiled at me and said, “I have a great suggestion for you. Perhaps you should read your own blogs.”

Nobody likes a smartass.

Till we read again.