There's an old idea, often credited to the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, that whoever can make you angry becomes your master.
The first time I heard it, I thought it was about keeping your cool and not letting people wind you up… but it goes a lot deeper than that.
The person who can control your emotions doesn't just ruin your afternoon. They shape what you go for, what you hold back from, what you believe about yourself and what you think is possible, and most of the time you don't even realise they're doing it.
So the real question isn't how to stop getting angry. It's who your master is.
The people who know exactly what to say
Think about the people in your life who can get under your skin faster than anyone else.
The ones who know the exact thing to say, the look, the tone, the comment that lands in a way nobody else's could… one sentence from them and you're 12 years old again.
That isn't a coincidence. People can only press the buttons that are already there, so when someone gets a reaction out of you that's bigger than the moment deserves, they haven't created something new. They've touched something old.
Your mind stores emotional experiences differently from everyday ones. When something happens with a strong feeling attached, especially when you're young, it gets filed as important, as a lesson, as something to protect you from next time.
Later on, anything that looks or sounds even slightly similar can set off the same reaction, long before the thinking part of your brain has had a chance to weigh in.
That's why you can know, logically, that a comment shouldn't bother you and still feel it in your whole body.
The reaction isn't really about what was just said, it's about what it reminded you of.
Where your attention goes, your energy follows
This part is crucial to understand.
Every time someone can pull that reaction out of you, they have your attention. You replay the conversation, rehearse what you should have said and lie awake going over it, then carry it into your next meeting, your evening with your family and your Sunday.
And for as long as your attention is on them, it isn't on you.
Attention is energy, and it's the most valuable thing you have, because whatever you give it to grows. So when someone can take your attention whenever they like, they're not just upsetting you, they're quietly taking the energy you'd otherwise put into your life, your work and the people you love.
That's what makes them your master.
Not that they're louder or more powerful than you, but that they get to decide where your energy goes.
And here's something that changes how you see it. When someone makes a comment that's designed to get under your skin, it often says more about them than it does about you. People don't usually go out of their way to cut someone down unless something about that person bothers them. Your progress might be making them uncomfortable. Your confidence might be reminding them of something they never went for.
So when you take the bait, you hand the control straight back to them. But when you can see where the comment is really coming from, it loses its grip. You stop asking "what's wrong with me?" and start asking "what's going on for them?"
Your master doesn't have to be in the room
This is where it gets uncomfortable, because the person with the most control over you often isn't someone you see every day.
Sometimes they're not even alive any more.
When we're young, we don't just hear what the important people around us say, we take it in. Psychologists call this internalising, and it's how children learn to make sense of the world.
A parent's worry becomes your caution, a teacher's frustration becomes your belief about how clever you are, and a coach's criticism becomes the voice you hear before every big moment.
Over time, you stop noticing it's theirs and it just sounds like thinking.
Here's how you can tell.
Your inner voice often doesn't say "I", it says "you".
You're not ready.
You'll embarrass yourself.
Who do you think you are?
That's not how you talk about yourself, that's how someone talked to you.
So when you go to post the video, send the proposal, raise your prices, take the stage or put yourself out there, it's their voice you hear.
And when you hold back and tell yourself you're just being realistic, that's often them too. Whether they're in your life now or not, they're still deciding what you're allowed to go for.
I saw this clearly with a client recently.
She's brilliant at what she does, but every time she went to post on social media she'd stall.
She'd write it, edit it and wait until it was perfect, and then leave it sitting in her drafts.
On the surface it looked like perfectionism, or not having enough wins to show yet. But when we went underneath it, it wasn't really the audience she was afraid of.
It was an old feeling of being judged and picked apart, and when we followed it back, it led to her Dad.
Years later, he could still control how she felt with a single comment, and without her realising it, that same feeling was sitting between her and the post button.
She didn't have a social media problem. She had a master.
When she saw it, she put it perfectly. She'd been living inside someone else's limits. Every time she held back, she was staying within the boundaries he'd set for her years ago, without ever choosing them herself.
Proving them wrong is still letting them win
Now, a lot of driven people will read this and think, not me, I don't listen to them, I've spent my whole life proving them wrong.
And I understand that, because for a lot of people it works, for a while.
Someone told you you'd never amount to anything, so you built something.
Someone doubted you, so you outworked everyone.
Their voice became your fuel, and you've got the results to show for it.
But look closely at what's actually happening. If you're doing it to prove them wrong, they're still the one setting the target and their opinion is still the measure.
Your success is still a conversation with them, and you're still looking over your shoulder to see if they've noticed.
Doing the opposite of what someone expects isn't freedom.
It's the same leash, pulled in the other direction.
That's why proving people wrong only serves you for so long. Motivation that comes from outside you, from approval, fear or the need to win an argument, tends to run out.
It keeps you moving, but it rarely lets you feel satisfied.
You hit the goal and there's a moment of "see?", and then it's gone, because the person you were really trying to convince isn't watching, or if they are, they still don't say what you needed to hear.
So you set the next goal, and the next.
Motivation that comes from inside you, from what you actually value and who you want to be, is the kind that lasts, and it feels completely different. You still work hard, you just stop needing anyone to see it.
How to find out who your master is
When I have this conversation with clients, it can be one of the most revealing parts of the whole process. It can also be uncomfortable, but it's usually the moment things start to make sense.
Sit with these for a minute:
- When you imagine succeeding at something big, whose reaction do you picture first?
- When you imagine failing publicly, whose face comes to mind?
- Whose approval do you still want, even if you'd never say it out loud?
- Who can still make you feel small with one sentence?
- When your inner critic speaks, whose voice and words does it use?
For most people, the same one or two names come up again and again.
This isn't about blaming them.
Most of the people who shaped us were doing their best with what they'd been given, and many of them were carrying someone else's voice too.
You can understand that, and love them, and still decide they don't get to run your life any more.
Choosing a different master
The big realisation clients have off the back of this is simple, but it changes everything. They get to choose.
They can choose that this person, and this voice, no longer rules their life. Not by fighting it or proving it wrong, but by no longer taking its word as the truth about who they are.
The first step is to stop seeing yourself as broken. The part of you that's holding you back isn't a fault, it's a protective part of your mind doing what it learned to do based on what happened before. You don't have to fight it.
You can acknowledge it, thank it for trying to keep you safe, and then choose something different.
It also helps to realise you didn't take things the wrong way. You took them exactly the way your past experiences taught you to. Your reactions made sense based on what you'd been through. You weren't broken. You were protected. And now you get to decide whether you still need that protection.
With the client I mentioned, we turned it into a simple game. Every time she hits post, it's 1-0 to her, and every time it goes back into the drafts, it's 1-0 to him.
Suddenly, posting wasn't about likes, getting it perfect or what anyone would think. It was about who gets to decide, and each post became a small piece of evidence that she was back in charge.
Afterwards, she said it didn't feel as heavy. The same situations were still there, but they no longer had a hold on her, because she knew the decision was hers.
You can do the same.
The next time you hold back from something, whether it's the message, the proposal, the price or the video, ask yourself: whose point is this, mine or theirs?
That decision matters, but on its own it usually isn't enough. Those beliefs weren't learned through logic, so logic alone won't undo them. They were learned through emotion and repetition, often years before you could question them, and they're held in the subconscious.
That's where the deeper work comes in. With hypnosis and NLP, we go back to where those beliefs were formed and change what they're built on.
The voice loses its charge, the reactions that used to take over in a second start to quieten, and the beliefs you've been carrying about yourself, the ones that were never yours to begin with, can finally be replaced with your own.
What's left is something most people haven't felt in years: your attention back on your own life, your energy going where you choose, and your decisions made by you.
So here's the question I'd leave you with.
Who is your master? And are you ready to take your power back?
If something in this landed for you, and you'd like to talk it through, you can book a free Breakthrough Call with me at derekelder.com/book-a-call.