"1. Learn to Feel Anger When It Comes To You. Seems silly. Too easy. But it’s awfully difficult. Sometimes others realize my anger before I do. Sometimes I know something is wrong but can’t identify the feeling. It takes practice (just like any sport) to know when anger is rising within you and to be able to bring your awareness to it. When anger comes to us, it actually brings physical changes on the body. The idea is to simply learn to discover those changes and be ready to feel and listen to them when they happen. Only after consistent practice — pausing to reflect and identify what we’re feeling when we feel it — can we identify anger before something or someone else takes the brunt of it. Your personal anger doesn’t just hurt you; it can have an impact on every part of your life, including every interaction you have with others. 2. Understand Your Anger. It is a basic human emotion. This means it’s not only normal, but useful. We have to feel it, because it is part of the human brain function. Authorize yourself to be angry. It’s a way of defending yourself and a way of getting alert when we need it so that we can avoid immediate danger. We really need anger, but we need to domesticate it, to learn an emotional process that leads us either to channel it in useful ways or to reduce it altogether. Ask yourself questions about your anger. Where did it come from? Why? When a similar situation arises how can I handle it differently and with a cooler head? Once I began to recognize my anger I became more aware of what I had in life. In understanding my anger I became more grateful for what I had and this in turn created a cycle whereby I became angry less often. In essence, gratefulness can displace anger. 3. Tame Your Anger. Once you are aware of when anger comes and what it actually is, you can begin understanding how to tame it. It takes introspection and self-questioning; it takes the willingness to not just adapt but to, in some cases, entirely change. One tip I’ve found helpful is to imagine I have a thermometer for my anger. How am I feeling now? What number would I give it? What strategies have I practiced that can allow me to lower that number? Numbers, for me, helped make my abstract anger into a tangible thing that I could learn to control. temp
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 01:32:43 +0000
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