Drifting Away

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Take A Chill Pill..

You had a bad day at work and then one small thing happens - someone finished your favourite ice cream, your mobile phone battery dies on you or your boyfriend or girlfriend is late. It could be anything - but it triggers your anger and you let it out. And afterwards, you feel drained and exhausted but somehow, unrelieved. It is almost as if that little cup of rage inside you has not emptied itself out and will continue, quietly running over inside you.

This is not the way you manage anger. In fact, this is how you want to handle anger if you are set on being angry more than just occasionally.
Anger is a normal part of the spectrum of human emotions. It is not something is to repressed or denied. Nor it is something to be used as a weapon against another person. Anger is something to be acknowledge and channelled into appropriate actions. What we want to avoid when we get angry is saying or doing things that diminish the dignity of the other person or hurt them emotionally or physically.

But when you are angry, your tendency is to react and react quickly. Change that tendency. Instead, take a step back, take a deep breath and remember that the way you express your anger is always your choice. Instead of reacting to your anger as though it was a weather pattern - some kind of cyclone or monsoon that cannot be avoid - be proactive. Try to anticipate your anger and allow that awareness to influence your next steps.

Once you are done with that, try these 6 chill pill strategies to help yourself cool off.

1. Take anger off your to-do list
Stress at work is often an unavoidable reality with demanding clients, last minute assignments and conflicts with colleagues. But curb those anger speed bumps, by prioritising the important stuff and working systematically through the problems.

2. Speak softly but firmly... always
This helps you become a centre of calm so you are not triggering anyone else's anger and neither will you be helping fuel your own.

3. Learn to read your signs
Very few people go from zero to red-hot angry that fast. It is usually a sequence of events that triggers it. If you are aware of this and can track your signs, you can anticipate th rage and sidestep it by taking a deep breath and looking at it from a different perspective. Before you react, reflect.

4. Make your anger positive
Anger is positive when it seeks to change the action, not the person. If anger can be expressed and left at that, then it can achieve good. In his book "Light On Lift", author B. K. S. lyengar says: "Anger is out of control when it flares up in us like a fire that we have no control over and smoulders long after the fire is out."

5. Get daily body and soul time
Solitary time for strenuous physical exercise functions as a daily chill pill that helps you process your stress so that you can mange day-to-day anger triggers better.

6. Don't hold back your anger
Finally, instead of suppressing your anger and hatred, quietly acknowledge your anger and the reasons for it. We need to actively cultivate the antidotes to anger and hatred: patience and tolerance. Believing it or not, anger requires more energy than cultivating these 2 states. When you engage in the practice of patience and tolerance, you are engaged in combat with hatred and anger.

kAkA.hUnTeR

Soulful.

spoke at : 3/25/2008 05:53:00 PM

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