What is your New Year’s resolution? If you are looking for ideas to control your anger, I hope this post is helpful. If you have a serious anger issue, I suggest you seek help from a professional worker for timely treatment.
As I mentioned in my post: How to be happy, I mentioned we are humans and we have feelings. If you feel angry sometimes, it is normal. However, if you feel your anger affects your life, relationship, and health, you do need to find ways to control your anger.
There are various reasons why people are angry: parents’ influence, past experiences, or current situations. No matter what different reasons they are, in my opinion, there is only one reason: You.
Why? It is very simple: You have the power. You have the choice. You just need to realize that you have the power to control your anger. You have the choice to choose not to be angry. If you don’t realize your anger issue is your issue, you will never control your anger.
I know there are some popular anger control methods like taking a deep breath and counting to 5, it might work sometimes, but you have to realize, that unless you change, otherwise, you will feel angry time and time. If you always complain to others to be responsible for your anger, you will never control your anger.
I hope you know that you have the power. You have the choices.
As I mentioned above, there are various reasons why people are angry. Many people have abusive parents. They were abused physically or verbally by their parents. To a child, it is a lifelong hurt. As a child, he didn’t know how to express his depression, he let out his hurt feelings in the way of anger. Or someone learned from their easily upset parents to express his frustration angrily.
Many people have hurtful experiences like being cheated by their spouse or they are treated unfairly in the workplace. They don’t know how to handle this kind of situation. They feel upset and angry.
They thought being angry was the way to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it is not. There is a better solution: Keep calm and focus on solving the problem.
How not to be angry?
Be positive. Don’t focus on something negative. Turn those negative experiences into positive ones. Being fired? It is time to find a new job you like or be your boss. Your boyfriend cheated on you? Hooray, it is glad to lose the one who doesn’t love you.
Be forgiving. Forgive those people who hurt you. When you forgive those people who hurt you, you free yourself. You choose to cut off those unhappy life experiences and negative people in your life and world. You gain the power to focus on a more positive future.
Move on. If you always focus on that unhappy past and negative people, you will always be tangled by the angry feeling. You lose your control over the people who hurt you. Don’t let anyone control you except yourself. Move on and keep going for a better life.
One example is, someone who was divorced and keeps saying something bad about his ex. He is still angry with his ex. To be honest, no one likes an angry upset person like this. If he wants to have a happy future life, learn the lessons from his former marriage and move on.
Once you know you have the power, you can make the choice, next time when something happens, you know how to keep your power and make the right choice.
I also have some practical tips to help you control your anger when you are in daily conflicts. In the beginning, you might find it difficult to apply. However, if you keep practicing, you will control your anger sooner or later.
Ignore it.
Many times you might be angry with something small and trivial like your spouse forgot to take the trash bin out or he bought you something wrong. Take my advice: Just ignore it. Don’t tell me you can’t ignore it. You definitely can. You just need to practice how to ignore it.
When someone is angry at you because of your fault, say sorry sincerely and try to correct your mistake immediately. If he is angry for no reason, try your best to explain. If it doesn’t work, ignore it. Don’t say anything back. Just ignore it. Many times silence is a better way to fight back. If you do have anger, try to say something silently in your mind.
By keeping silent, you give yourself the chance to keep calm. If the other angry one is reasonable, he will stop being aggressive too. If not, just let him keep acting up like watching a live drama show or you just run away to avoid the intense conflict.
Say something nice.
If you feel it is hard to ignore the situation, or you feel you need to say something, say something nice first. In the beginning, you might find it hard to do so, however, in many situations, it is an effective way to reduce your anger.
For example, a caring Karen came over to you and yelled at you: Put your fuck mask on. Your normal reaction might be like this: Shut up. It is not your business. Guess what, mostly, there will be a live drama show happening soon.
However, if you say something like this: Thanks for being so caring. If you could say what you said nicely, your advice would be more appreciated. I am sure, the caring Karen will feel bad about herself.
There is Chinese wisdom: Don’t hit the person with a smile. If you are nice, few people will be rude to you unless he is insane. If he is insane, it doesn’t make sense to waste your precious time on an insane person. Just ignore him and move on.
Think in others’ shoes.
Many times, when people are angry, they are not angry at you, they are angry with what you did or what they felt about you. When people are angry with you, don’t take it personally. People might have specific reasons why they are angry. Once you start to think in another’s shoes, you will not get offended easily.
When you are angry, I am sure, many times you are not angry with the person, you are angry with what the person did. Instead of being angry, try to explain the reason why you dislike what happened and focus on solving the problem.
Be humorous.
When you try to use humor to solve the conflict, you will find being humorous is more effective than being angry. Instead of saying bad words right back, you say something funny. When you learn to laugh at yourself, it means, you gain the power to control your anger.
Keep calm and focus on solving the problem. Keep your power to make the best choice. Life is an art itself. A real life master turns messy chaos into a peaceful blessing. I believe you can do that too. That is why you stop by this post. I hope you find this post helpful.