How to overcome anger?

“Peace begins with a smile.”

─ Mother Teresa

Anger is one of the most common emotions which people deal with in their daily life. As long as you don't realize its presence in your subconscious mind and don't change your state, it could be very destructive emotion. You would probably know some of the consequences which anger brings to your life. When you're angry, you will easily lose your temper, you can't concentrate well, you can take things too personally and make your worst decisions at that times. The list of destructive consequences which anger could cause, can go on and on. But, let's see that how the feeling of anger is triggered. You can read about your core life values here, which ultimately determines your true internal happiness. You can also read in another article about your life rules which you'll subconsciously create for yourself to get satisfied by the level of your progress in life. The important thing to consider here is that you will usually set some ground-rules for your life values that they're almost impossible to be met. So, anger could appear as a result of not meeting your life rules (ground-rules for your core life values).

How many times do you usually get angry during your daily life? How does the feeling of anger affect you? What do you do to cool down when you get angry? Let's see that how we can cope with the feeling of anger:       

1. You should always remind yourself that your life rules are not necessarily the best ones. So, when you hear or see someone else's rules, don't fight with them blindly. Open up your eyes and ears, listen and watch their rules carefully because they might be better than yours. You don't need to worry about being changed (manipulated) by others' rules. In the end it's your choice to push the button to either accept their rules or not. Be the boss of your mind to say the last words.

2. You should always keep in mind that everyone is unique. Not any two persons could exactly be the same. Everyone has his own ground-rules. There is no right and wrong between your rules and the other ones. They are just different shapes of interpretation of the same experiences. 

3. Stretch your mind and welcome to take different opinions than yours. Be as flexible as possible in taking different ideas than yours. Appreciate having different thoughts and rules and try to learn from each one of them. This could be one of the best ways to grow. What if all of us had the same rules, ideas and thoughts? How boring and declining would have that been? That would have been the exact opposite direction of growing!

4. When you notice that you're feeling angry, the most important thing you should do is to change your state. The best way to change your state in an instant is through anchoring technique which is discussed in details in another article. In a nut shell, when you become aware of your undesired emotion, change your physiology & focus to come up with the best possible state in your mind & body.

5. Breathe deeply and concentrate on your breathing by counting your inhales and exhales. This will help you to cool down your mind and refresh by focusing just on your breathing.

6. You don't need to always take things too personally. Things are not always about you. You might think that way, but in most of the cases they're not! Too often, people with low level of self-esteem and security take things too personally.

7. You better rethink that you might have had a misunderstanding in the situation that caused the anger. That person didn't mean it deep down to upset you. It wasn't his intention to make you angry and it's just a way that you are representing and interpreting the things to yourself.

8. Always become aware of the things which are out of your own control. These are the things like getting stuck in traffic, having a bad rainy/snowy/windy day when you're out, and so on. When you recognize that it's something entirely out of your control, let it go. At the times of getting angry by these kinds of situations, ask yourself: is this thing out of my control? If yes, let it go. Instead, focus on the stuff which are completely under your own control. Besides wasting your energy, what's the point in thinking about the stuff which are out of your control?! When you can't change a single thing about it, you better let it go.

Practice the above techniques to get strong enough dealing with the feeling of anger. Next time when you got angry, face it with all the power you have in your mind to control it and see how easy it is to defeat anger. Good luck practicing and progressing :)