HOW TO BE HAPPY KEY #9

Extinguish Anger :

Sure it’s easy to get mad and blow off some steam by screaming at the top of your lungs while pulling your hair out and making a big scene. But who does this make feel better? How does this help or change the situation? If anything, this makes things worse, as we all know from experience. There has been at least that one time where you blew up and felt guilty afterward. Perhaps you took your frustration out on someone who didn’t deserve it or, perhaps, you feel that maybe the individual deserved your verbal lashing but you still felt terrible after the incident. When things like this happen, we feel guilty for a reason. We know we are wrong and have misplaced our anger and frustration often making the situation worse.

Ultimately, we feel guilty because we realize and know that we could have and should have handled the situation differently. Most of all, you feel guilty because you are a good person who had a moment of vulnerability and weakness and decided to react in an undesirable and unproductive manner. Everyone gets angry, from time to 138 time, because we each are different in our own little ways. But as much as we are different, we are all very much living and breathing human beings trying to make a way through this thing called life. We all have different thoughts, emotions, and ways of dealing with things.

When we are angry, our voices to tend to get loud and our body language tends to become more aggressive. This does not make the situation better nor does it make our problems go away. Taking this into consideration, we must learn to choose our actions wisely because we are judged by our actions as well as our words. To feel better about situations that typically make us angry, we should explore methods, and alternative outlets, through which we can alleviate our negative emotions and energies. This can be done through

• Meditation and Prayer
• Exercise
• Communication

We all have different ways of expressing our anger but we should make a conscious effort to extinguish our anger in healthy ways. When people act physically out of 139 anger, they hurt themselves and others by creating additional problems. If they utilize exercise to use their built up physical energy instead, it will result in a positive and productive outcome when compared to the negative consequences and repercussions of physical aggression.

Similarly, when we choose words to lash out in anger, but do not think about and control the things we say, we also dig ourselves into deep, dark, and lonely hole. Since we cannot take back our words or actions, we should be careful about how we manage our anger. Sometimes dealing with anger and conflict resolution is all a matter of what you say, how you say it, and how the other person, or people, involved react to your anger response. Your tone and volume also factor into talking through anger and conflict.

Choose to take the high road and be the better person in every conflict that may arise. There are many good people in this world that are more than willing to help others learn to deal with their anger and frustrations. Whether people choose to approach dealing with their anger from a spiritual, physical, or verbal standpoint, they 140 should always remember to take the high road when conflict arrives.