Taking Charge of Anger

There seems to be a lot of anger in the world today, both focused and unfocused. Channeled anger can be seen in the worldwide peaceful protests that have continued throughout the summer, demanding equal justice for all. The pandemic has caused tremendous stress, physically, emotionally and mentally. You can see the results in the heightened reports of domestic violence and shootings.

In dealing with anger, it may help to ask ourselves a few questions: Do you find yourself feeling out of sorts or angry a lot? What do you do when you get angry? Does it help you move forward or keep you stuck? Let’s spend a little time on the subject of anger.

Anger is a powerful emotion that reveals itself in many different ways. Some folks seem to go through life with a chip on their shoulder. They are quick to find things to be angry about, always fix the cause of their anger as somewhere outside themselves, and occasionally erupt into rage. Their friends and families often feel like they need to walk on eggshells around them. Tension seems to be a constant companion, which can certainly be debilitating to the immune system.

Other people seem to run on a pretty even keel most of the time, but when they get angry, they explode and feel completely out of control. Still, others bottle up their anger until it blows like Vesuvius or Pinatubo, destroying all in its path.

Someone once described anger like jumping into a powerful sports car, gunning the motor, taking off at high speed, and then discovering that the brakes don’t work. However, it is possible to do some work on those brakes, and while you may want to get professional help, you can learn to be your own mechanic.

You can learn to accept yourself and others as they are, while at the same time, you focus on and move toward a new way of dealing with anger. You can learn to think constructively about what you’d like to have happen, rather than destructively about what you don’t want. And you can learn to channel the energy that now goes to fuel your anger into building an exciting future instead. You have the power to make the choice. It is within you.

It is a matter of deliberately making the decision to change the way you look at your world, and how you interact within it. Anger is an energy-waster, subtracting from life instead of adding to it. If you decide to use your enormous potential – and you DO have enormous potential – you can put the brakes on anger, shift gears, and take charge of your emotions and your life.