Use Your Anger

Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “Anyone can become angry – that’s easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.” This is an enduring insight into managing our emotions and relationships. If you can master this one, you are well on the way to a successful emotional intelligence journey. Anger is an emotion that exists for a reason; anger is not an emotion to bottle-up or ignore. If you manage it properly and use it purposefully, you can get results that engage your relationships. Think of the football coach who gets straight to the point at halftime. His stern feedback grabs his players’ attention and focuses them for the second half. The team returns refreshed, refocused and ready to win. In this case, the coach managed his emotions to motivate others to action. Expressing anger in appropriate ways communicates your strong feelings and reminds people of the gravity if a situation. Expressing anger too much or at the wrong times desensitizes people to what you are feeling, making it hard for others to take you seriously. Using a strong emotion like anger to benefit your relationships will take time to master, because hopefully you don’t have daily opportunities to practice! There is a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for this strategy, starting with becoming aware of your anger and what triggers it. Use your self-awareness skills to think about and define your varying degrees of anger – from what annoys you a little to what enrages you and sends you off the deep end. Write these down and choose words that are specific. Then write examples to explain when you feel this way. Determine when you should show your anger based on the criterion that if it’s shared it will improve the relationship somehow. To make your choices, use your social awareness skills to think about the other people involved and their responses. Remember that relationship management is about making choices and acting with the goal of creating an honest, deep connection with others. To do this, you need to be honest with others and with yourself, which sometimes means using anger with a purpose. Do you want to improve the way you manage your emotions and the appropriate use of anger? Truth@Life can help. Call 248-396-6255 or email me at curtis.songer@gmail.com for a FREE consultation. For more info on help I can provide check out http://truthatlife.com/