Tag: Anger

WE NEED TO BE REMINDED

I often mention that Mr. Rogers is one of my favorite philosophers and teachers. Many think this is some kind of joke. “He teaches children.” they say. That is only partially true. He taught lessons that we should learn as children. What is abundantly clear is that many have either never learned these lessons, chose not to learn them or have sense forgotten them. Looking at the picture above, “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” Even the subtitle ‘Self-control, expression and healthy outlets’. How many people do you know could use a refresher in these lessons? I think all of us could at some point in our lives.

Do we still need Mr. Rogers? Looking at some of the issues in the news such as Brown University, Australia, and even the director Rob Reiner, it is apparent lots of folks do not know what to do with the mad they feel. We need guidance in self-control, expression and healthy outlets. Certainly, Mr. Rogers is not the only solution, but would it not help us to review some of the childhood lessons that we do not always live up to?

One of the best things we can do for this world is to make sure that we teach the children these lessons. Not only our children, but by our example teach any children, or adults for that matter, that may be watching our behavior. Let them see there are healthy ways to solve a disagreement. Emotional maturity may not be discussed as openly and often as it should be. Let us work together to change that. Mental health in general is a very important topic that we need to make sure everyone feels safe to bring up and ask for help. Each of us working together can change the world.

WE ARE NOT HERE LONG ENOUGH ⏳️

One of the things that is difficult for many of us is letting things go. This can be made even tougher when there seems to be no good explanation as to why something, or someone, hurt us. You can be thinking hours, days or weeks later, “Why did that happen?” Most of us have had someone say something hurtful to us that has left its mark. It pops up in our heads now and then and we can’t help but wonder, “Why did they say that?” I know I have been there. Perhaps you know why they said it. It could have been completely unfair and unjustified. That can make it even worse.

Do you know what is worse than staying upset? Realizing what we lost by being so. The picture above shows the temperature on my way to work the other morning. Mind you, this is in summer. Only a few days earlier, it was in the 80s. In this state, the weather can turn that quick. Life is much the same. While we are busy being mad or being stressed out ruining our ability to have a good time and enjoy life to the fullest, life is moving on. What do I mean by life is moving on? We are getting older. Those we love are getting older as well. The most common emotion I have seen displayed at funerals is regret. If only I had one more day with them. If only we had spent more time together. Have you ever heard yourself say things like this? Have you thought them to yourself?

See this pretty lady next to me? We occasionally get upset with each other. There is usually a pretty good reason when it does happen. In the heat of the moment we can lose touch with how beautiful it feels to be in love with each other. That is why we like to fix things and get back to loving as quickly as possible. Why is this important? Hourglass. Life is like the sand in an hourglass. It is always slowly draining away. The time we lost fighting is time we will never have back. Say we spend an hour mad at each other. If we are together for 20 more years, we still would have lost that hour of love we could have had. Here is the important bit, we do not know how long we have with each other. Hopefully it is long, but there is the chance it could end for one of us tomorrow. How would we feel if we would have spent 60 minutes of the time we had left mad?

Do not misunderstand me. There are reasons to be upset. You should not fake emotions or not communicate your unhappiness. That will only lead to more problems and resentment later on. The point here is that we should work diligently to discover ways to solve our problems and move on. We all have less time than we think. I do not recall hearing of anyone who looked back on their life and said, “I sure am glad I spent that time being upset.” That is why self-improvement is so important. Becoming our best version of ourselves will allow us to experience more of the joy life has to offer in however much time we have left.

CAN YOU SPARE A MINUTE? NOT REALLY.

Last post we discussed the ever approaching and uncertainty of death. Not a really chipper subject, but one that should give us a sense of urgency to enjoy life now. That is what I would like to discuss with you today. How many of us put off enjoyment? The ever present “I will be happy when ___” way of thinking. What if we never make it to when? Again, not a very cheery thought, but one that deserves consideration. We may never get a shot at this merry-go-round of life.

Here is a great example – vacation! When we are on vacation, like my lovely lady and I were in the picture above, we are sure to make the most of it. “We might never get back here again. Let us enjoy it.” We say to each other. The truth is that the same might be said of any moment of your life. Our favorite restaurant that has been there forever may close unexpectedly tomorrow. The beautiful park we enjoy walking through may be turned into condos any day now. Our friends may move away and our loved ones may pass away. All of these moments are possible and at some point will happen.

This is all beginning to sound a little doom and gloomy. The question all of this begs us to ask ourselves is, “How are you spending this minute?” Tony Robbins has a great line, “What is wrong is always available. So it what’s right.” What are you focused on? Are you focused on how much of a hurry you are in and how inconvenient the long line at the grocery store is? You could be focused on how grateful you are that you do not have to hunt for your food or farm for it. Not only would that take a great deal longer, but success is not guaranteed. Either path is certainly justified and understandable. The fact remains one of them leads to a more enjoyable life. We should work to enjoy as many moments in life as we can. We might as well. We will never get them back again.

We all know people who are angry most of the time. Why? Do they know how good they have it? Yes, I am sure their lives could be better. Yes, we all have legitimate challenges and reasons to be disenfranchised. Still, we all have reasons to be grateful and full of joy and love. All we have to do is look around us and see those that are less fortunate and could use our help. Oh wait, we are getting into tomorrow’s post again,

THE ANSWER TO ANGER AND FEAR 😨

There is a lot of fear and anger in the world right now. Many people are scared of what tomorrow may bring. That is not only understandable, in many areas it is justified. There is also a lot of anger in the world. The powers that be seem to be succeeding at dividing the people in a bid to control and conquer them. You are hearing more than the average amount of people bashing each other and their opinions or stands on many issues. This could be political, religious, climate or a host of other categories. What is the cure to all of this craziness.

At the risk of being anticlimactic, the answer is in the photo above. We must promote what we love instead of bashing what we hate. Another way of looking at this, is promote solutions instead of complaining about problems. It is easy to point out what is not working. It is far more difficult to actually come up with a solution for solving that problem. The first step in creating a solution for any problem in this modern age is to find a way to work together. That doesn’t mean have everyone agreeing on everything, but there does have to be a mutual respect. Ask yourself who profits from us hating our neighbor? Here is a clue, it is not you or your neighbor. When we learn to work together with a healthy dose of respect for those who differ from us, that is when we become strongest.

A more direct and simple way to happiness over fear and anger is to promote what you exactly love. Talk about what gets you fired up and what puts joy in your heart and a smile on your face. As an example, I do not care for 70’s folksy rock or disco. I do, however, enjoy classic jazz and 80’s hard rock. What do you think would bring more joy to my heart, to complain and tell everyone how much I think one genre of music sucks, or to talk about my favorite bands and which songs I really like from them? Not only will that make my life more enjoyable, but I will be more enjoyable to be around. Nobody wants to be around the person who is constantly complaining.

Next time you find yourself filled with anger, fear or sadness, just start promoting what you love. Talk about and share what makes you happy. Here is a warning, there will be people who will tell you that what you enjoy sucks. There are just those people out there. Who knows, they might be filled with anger or fear and just not know how to express it. Instead of getting into a disagreement with them, just let them know you respect their opinion and end the conversation. You will not waste any energy and you will walk away a lot happier. An added bonus about expressing what you like is that you find people who like the same things. The same goes true for complaining, but what is more enjoyable, being in a crowd of people constantly complaining or people on fire with passion for what they love?

DON’T TAKE 5 YEARS! 😕

I love Marilyn Monroe. One of my favorite Hollywood icons. Margie and I have many Marilyn things at our house. This quote, although an exaggeration I am sure, makes a good point. How many of us have a hard time letting go of anger and frustration? When I use the term ‘us’ I am certainly including myself. When someone does something to upset me, I have a hard time letting it go. This is even more true if I do not understand why they did it in the first place. This is a character flaw I am working on, but still working on. Finding myself hours later asking, “Why would someone say/do something so hurtful?” is not only frustrating, but debilitating.

What I mean is that holding on to anger only extends the physical, mental and emotional discomfort after the original event has passed. This is like letting that person hurting you over and over again. It can also cause you increased blood pressure, upset stomach and suppressed immune system. This can lead to things like heart issues, ulcers and other illness. Is that really worth pondering why some fool cut you off in traffic? I would guess not.

One of the best ways not to have this issue is to take the suggestion of Marilyn above and try to avoid getting upset in the first place. There are several ways to do this including the realization the we can never be 100% sure of anyone’s intention. It also includes attaching new meanings to actions that offend and upset us. The most powerful way to beat anger is with gratitude. Being grateful will not allow us to be angry, at least not at the very moment we are being grateful. Whatever you do, work on reducing the amount of time you spend in anger.

RECONNECT NOT REQUIRED 🔌

Forgiveness is a gift you truly give yourself. Most of the time, the person you are upset with could care less if you forgive them. Harboring anger only steals your peace. Knowing this, why do people put off forgiving others? I believe there are two reasons. Let us take a look at these one at a time.

First reason people don’t forgive others is that somehow they equate that with the other person ‘winning’. The opposite is actually true. If you let the person continue to keep you in a state of hurt and anger, then that would be closer to ‘winning’. In actuality, the only winning is living a peaceful and rewarding life. That can only be accomplished through forgiveness. If someone is still renting space in your head or your heart, evict them!

The second reason people withhold forgiveness, is they assume forgiveness means they would have to reconnect with that person. This is certainly not true. There are people who sadly can be in our hearts, but not our life. If there is someone who has done you so wrong you want them neither in your heart or your life, than you must forgive them. By holding on to anger, or some feeling of hurt, you are maintaining a connection.

Forgive them today and set yourself free.

DON’T MAKE IT WORSE 😒

Anger sucks. Feeling anger causes many poor physical symptoms. High blood pressure, depressed immune system, and impaired judgment. Can you imagine how maintaining these for any length of time could affect you? There are some people who live an angry lifestyle. Continuous high blood pressure can…well…kill you. That certainly is not envious. Short of killing you, there are many other bad options from high blood pressure. I will let you research that on your own. A constantly depressed immune system means you will suffer many more colds and illnesses. You will miss more work and not be as productive in general.

What is worse than anger? When you let someone else’s anger make you angry. It is like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it. If we are being honest, it can really be difficult to not get angry when someone is yelling at us. When we do, however, we fall victim to the three conditions mentioned above. We did not even mention the impaired judgement. Sure, what someone did to anger us is most certainly terrible. When we respond from that state of anger, the chances that it will be a good response is slim to none.

Work on mastering your emotional control and your response to anger. When you do become angry, realize your ability to judge the situation objectively is seriously compromised. Learning how to get yourself out of anger quickly will reduce the chances of having to deal with the consequences of choices made from a poor emotional state.

IT IS ALL ABOUT CONTROL 🛂

Here is something that is simple to understand, but far from easy to do. That is not to let outside circumstances and people control your emotions. This is more difficult the closer the people are to you. The more they mean to you, the more emotional reaction they can cause you to experience. That is, only if you let them. I am not advocating you become an unfeeling zombie. Far from it. What I am advocating is to not only control, but choose what emotions you feel.

If you are one of the 95% of people who go through life without taking a look inwards, this concept that you have any control of your emotions may seem foreign to you. Here is the truth. What you feel depends on the meaning you assign to someone’s behavior or words. If a stranger walks up and tells you they do not like you, it may bother you but beyond that you will go about your day. If a good friend tells you the same thing, it has a far greater impact. The emotion you choose in response to that will dictate your behavior, which will go a long way to deciding the fate of not only that interaction, but the life of the friendship.

This becomes even more difficult when the person’s behavior is down right disrespectful. Even then, you have the option, as Sun Tzu so plainly put it, to respond intelligently. You may ask what some man named after a star has anything to do with your life. Sun Tzu wrote the amazing book, The Art of War. It not only has timeless advice for military combat, but can be applied to your business and personal life as well.

When you pause and choose how to respond to a situation, you take control of that situation. In the case of our friend telling us they do not like us, we can choose several ways to respond. We can be defensive and inform them that we no longer like them. We may even go on to list their faults and how we feel we are better than them. That is responding from a place of hurt and anger. It will not only do little to solve the original complaint our friend may have, we have now widened the chasm between our hearts. If we are interested in maintaining this friendship, it would serve us far better to respond with a genuine caring and inquisitive question about what made our friend change their mind about our relation. We not only may preserve the friendship, we may also make room for it to grow and become closer. As an added bonus, we may learn something about ourselves.

I am not a fool to think that this is an easy process. I still struggle with it on occasion as well. What we must understand is that when we allow someone to affect us emotionally, we, in effect, become their servant and they become our master. We relinquish control of the situation and the repercussions that will result. A far wiser and more intelligent response would be to consider what outcome you wish for the situation. Another question to ask yourself is the effects of the negative emotions on our mental and physical well-being worth handing over control to our emotions? As I said in the beginning of this post, it is not easy. We need tools and strategies, many of which can be found in the articles on this website, to help us gain control. The price we will pay to do that will be well worth it.

REWIRE YOUR BRAIN 🧠

It can be so frustrating when you are doing your best to live a calmer and more loving life and people do their best to challenge that. You can bite your tongue one time, but the next time you just remember how much it hurt. Not only that, but people can be so thoughtless and really push us. You may even ask yourself, “What is the point of trying to resist acting on my anger when I can’t do it all of the time?” That is a fair question. One, every time that you do manage to do it, you end up with less hurt feelings on the other side and less to apologize for later. As the picture above says, you are also working on rewiring your brain.

If you take the same path in the woods everyday, and then you choose to change it up for a week, the second path will not be nearly as worn in as the first. Similarly, if you have been a slave to your emotions for years of your life, and now you are trying to take control of them, the path in your brain for reaction will be a lot more worn in than the one for intelligently responding. It takes practice and, on occasion, we may slip and go down the more familiar path. Give yourself some compassion. It takes a long time to rewire a house. Can you imagine rewiring a machine with over 86 billion connections? That is how many neurons are in the average brain. They make up our ‘wiring’.

Doing your best to rewire 86 billion connections not enough motivation for you? Think of this – those people disturbing your peace would love to see you lose control. In fact, sometimes that is all they are after. By maintaining control and responding instead of reacting will infuriate them like nothing else. Done enough times and they might give up trying to upset you all together. What if you fail and let them get to you? Just remember, they may have won the battle, but the war is still yours to win. Use that feeling of frustration and failure to motivate you to keep control next time. As the picture above says, “Someone out there is holding their breath waiting for you to fail. Make sure they suffocate.” You don’t actually want to kill anyone, but killing off their desire to upset you would certainly help you live a more calm and peaceful life.

Keep doing your best to resist giving into anger. You are not at the mercy of your emotions, you are their master. That does not mean you should turn into a cold and unfeeling person. It means you should learn how to use and channel every emotion you experience. Both the good and the seemingly bad. I used the word seemingly because you can use them as well. Have a lot of anger? Go to the gym and get a great workout in. Feeling sad or down? Use that to reach out and connect with friends. Feeling lonely? Perhaps you could make friends with a stranger who could also use some company. Feel your emotions, just remember to master them as well.

1 OF THE BEST LESSONS I’VE LEARNED. 👩‍🏫

In this crazy world, I have learned lots of lessons. This has become accelerated the older I get. That is a lesson itself. People generally go one of two ways when they get older. They become more rigid, or stuck in their ways, or they realize that they ‘don’t know what they don’t know’. I am fortunate enough to fall into the latter category. The older I get, the more open and compassionate I have become. Going through challenges in life can make you hard or allow you to relate to others in a deeper and more meaningful way.

One of the greatest lessons I have learned through everything is the importance of remaining calm. Extreme emotions can be beneficial. They can give us a boost of energy when we need it. Extreme fear can heighten our senses to keep us safe. More often than not, extreme emotions are a negative. They drain us of valuable energy and deplete our immune systems. Yes, you may get a boost of adrenaline at first, but it comes with a price eventually. When we are in the whirlwind of emotion, it can cloud our judgement and we may make decisions we will regret. Things that seem like the right thing to say or do when we are angry, sad, depressed or a host of other intense emotions, can have us asking for forgiveness for years after.

The quote above is some great advice. Decisions that could affect you long-term are best not made in an extreme emotional state. Why? When you act impulsively, you are transferring control of your decisions from your logical mind, to your irrational emotions. When you are able to stay calm, it is almost like being able to look down on a situation from above. When you act emotionally, it is like looking out from inside a whirlwind. You may not have all of the information to make the best decision. Even if you do, you may not be taking it into consideration.

I am not going to be foolish enough to tell you that staying calm in the middle of an emotional decision is easy. It is not. It takes a good strategy and a lot of practice. What is a good strategy for staying calm? That varies as much as the individual. You can try deep breathing, counting to ten, picturing something that makes you laugh. Whatever works for you. There is plenty of books and research on the topic I invite you to investigate on your own. What I can tell you is that developing the ability to stay calm is worth all of the effort. Staying calm is not only a talent, it is a rare and valuable talent. It allows you to maintain control when others lose it. It saves you the stress and heartache of regret over something you said or did that you should not have. One more thing that staying calm requires is patience with yourself. This is not a talent that will come all at one. No matter how much you study and practice methods on your own, it will be a lot different when you have to put them into practice.

My advice is to invest some time and energy into developing the ability to stay calm. It will not only give you the ability to objectively approach challenges in life, but will save your relationships much of the pain you will inflict by acting emotionally. Invest time in discovering strategies for staying calm. Invest time in practicing them. Your relationships will thank you. Your stress level will thank you. Your life will thank you.