Ever had periods in your life when you just don’t seem to feel happy? Do you go about your days always feeling angry at something? -no matter how small or irrelevant it is, does it still anger and irritate you?
This has happened to me many times throughout my life, and I bet I am not alone.
I would go through days, weeks, or even months at once where I just couldn’t loosen the feelings of frustration, irritation, and anger. Even over the smallest of reasons, I would still get mad. During these times, I wasn’t my normal self for my loved ones, friends, and pets. My quality of life was significantly impacted all because I would let the stupidest things affect me.
After a while, I just couldn’t handle it anymore, I had to get over this anger problem. I began to realize that feeling angry had become a habit to me. It was just something my mind was set on auto-pilot for. And like all other habits, I felt that it can easily be changed if am committed to doing that.
Here are five ways which significantly helped me reverse this negative habit into feeling more happy, positive, and joyful. If it helped me, I know for a fact it can help someone else too!
1- Turn Off the Mind Chatter
When I’d feel angry my reasoning skills would depreciate dramatically. Everything I believed in suddenly wouldn’t matter to me anymore. I believe in things such as eating healthy and exercising. While I am angry, my mind chatter would be saying stuff like these:
“Why am I doing this?”
“Why eat healthy, it isn’t helping you anyway.”
“Exercise isn’t important, you’re not even seeing any results.”
“People are stupid, why does everyone always do stupid things?”
I don’t even know who that person is in my head who speaks to me like that, but I realized that when I listened and believed in it, my anger took control of my day. That’s when I’d lose sight on my beliefs and other things that usually make me happy. That’s when I started blaming and cursing everyone else for no real reason.
I began to believe that this negative person inside my head was me. But it wasn’t. I know who I am and what I believe in. Realizing this, I started looking at this negative mind-chatter from a different perspective. I started seeing it as my evil counterpart, who’s always trying to get me to go on the wrong path. An alternate personality trying to compete with the real me.
I made it into a game and just started to ignore it. I knew it was going to be there, I could predict what it was going to say, and I stopped listening to it.
2- Go Out Into Nature
This was without doubt the most affective tip for me. When you go into nature, you see that everything is balanced, peaceful, and as it should be. When we’re out of balance with ourselves our negative emotions begin to emerge. Everything in existence has male and female energy flowing through it. When one is out of balance, it expresses specific symptoms.
When male energy is out of balance, a person expresses symptoms of anger, frustration, arrogance and even violence. It can be anything from physical or verbal abuse, or the anger energy just bottles up inside until a breakdown occurs.
When female energy is out of balance, it expresses symptoms of gluttony, jealousy, drama, and things like shopping excessively (note from Jane: eating chocolates should go on this list 
).
The majority of humans are out-of-balance in one way or another. This makes it difficult to remain balanced yourself, because interacting with people is something we do daily. This is why going into nature is so important. I found it impossible to express feelings of anger when I was out in the woods or sitting next to a river.
It also helps clear your mind, understand life, and put things into a whole different perspective.
3- Get a Massage
Our bodies have the amazing ability to manifest the symptoms of our thoughts and actions. If you’re angry and irritated all the time, your body will begin to manifest symptoms of those emotions. For me, the symptoms were headaches, fatigue, neck pains, back pains, dark eyes, etc… The negative energy causing this will remain there until it is released.
Something such as a massage will help release the negative energy. You cannot feel angry after having your back rubbed, it just feels too good. Ask your spouse or someone close to you to give you a massage. I’m extremely fortunate and grateful for my wife. She’s the one who taught me this lesson and relieved all my muscle knots and aches. She was telling me to think the words “release” as she was working on them, and I have to say it worked really well.
4- Turn Off the TV
When I started searching for the reasons why I was always feeling angry, I immediately thought about the TV. The next time I watched TV, I stopped seeing it as a form of entertainment and began seeing it for was it truly was. I began to notice that all of the shows, commercials, and especially the news, all contained everything I was expressing. All the people on the shows were either angry, dramatic, irritated, judgmental, or stupid. The news only reports on things which are negative or fear based, always telling us the next thing to be scared of, what to believe in, and how we should think.
It really got me thinking that watching this stuff, was resulting in me thinking in the ways which I didn’t want.
I turned off my television and canceled the cable. And honestly, it has made such a big difference in my life. Not only are my thoughts and actions more peaceful, I’m far more productive and less distracted than I ever was. I wasted endless hours on the TV.
5- Laughter
Laughing is something I never did during my earlier stages when I was angry. I always had a serious, crinkled look on my face. This of course, was a habit that I had conditioned myself to do. How can you be happy when you don’t smile and never laugh? Laughter is the cure for everything, and I made it my mission to start smiling and laughing more.
Instead of always finding things which irritated me, I started looking for things which made me laugh. If I did something like stand up and hit my head, or stub my toe, I’d force myself to just laugh about it instead of getting mad and shouting.
After a while, laughing became more of a habit over getting angry. Getting angry used to be a pre-programmed response which would just happen automatically, now it is laughing.
Final Thoughts
Just like anything, anger is a habit which can be changed. It takes a lot of persistence, diligence, and the desire to achieve happiness. Who wants to live their life feeling angry all the time? What’s cool about that?
These five things aren’t the only ways to reverse anger, but doing these made a significant difference in my ability to overcome this issue. If you’re ever feeling angry and can’t seem to get rid of the habit, the best advice I can give is to just ignore the mind chatter, and take a walk in the woods. This will without a doubt put you in a state of balance and peace. It will make you realize that the things you were angry about, were most of the time insignificant, and that we tend make things a much bigger deal than they really are.
Have anything to add?
What are your views on breaking the habit of anger? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section!
Sean Burrows loves to learn and discover new ways to improve the quality of peoples lives. He studies personal development and health rigorously, and shares his life’s lessons, creative ideas, and healthy recipes through his Personal Growth blog - You can also follow Sean on his Twitter page!
Article by GuestAuthor
This post was written by a guest author. If you want to share your exclusive stuff with our community get in touch with us here. Make sure you fully read the big block of text above the contact form before filling it :)
Guest has written 111 awesome posts for Problogging Success.
When my blog was under Jane’s watch, everything was under control.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Sean, you have presented many possible ways of getting rid of anger. Mine is a bit different - some time ago I realized that being angry I make bad to my own health and state of mind. I decided to change my attitude to angriness - I just say ‘I’m angry. I shouldn’t. I’d better go to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee for myself.’ I call it self training. And it works - at least with me.
Very interesting Anna,
It’s true that anger and stress can really damage our health if it’s constant over a period of time. Your self training is perfect, finding what works best for you is half the battle! Thanks for your comment
Sean, those suggestions to help control ones anger is very good. I will like to add this one to the list, “Rampage of appreciation.” Whenever you are feeling that you are about to get angry, immediately start think of all the good things in your life, in your immediate surroundings or replace a bad thought with a funny thought.
This process will help the person to take control of their anger.
~Tisha
Great thing to add Tisha!
I like that haha. Rampage of appreciation! I’m gonna have to remember that one
Great comment, thanks!
Ha! Turning off the mind chatter is probably the biggest thing. We can spend a bit too much time over-thinking things and perpetuating negativity by having those internal conversations.
It’s great that you choose to focus on things that make you laugh when you’re down or angry. I relate to that; it helps. It also supports the assertion that happiness is a choice. Looking at it this way, you see that it’s true.
I don’t have anything to add, I just support the point about laughter. I laugh every day. Thanks, Sean!
Jon
You’re absolutely correct Jon! The mind chatter is a constant battle sometimes, but it can learn to be contained!
And it’s true about laughing. How can you ever feel angry or stressed when you’re laughing?
Thanks so much for your comments guys! Much appreciated
Hi Sean,
I think that the key to getting past anger is to understand what is causing the anger. Until you understand that, I believe that the anger remains there waiting for the trigger.
Golda
Very true Golda, there can be many different anchors stuck inside you that can trigger anger. Understanding why they’re there and where they came from can truly be the best way to eliminate them.
Forgiveness can be the cure for many things deep inside.
Great points!
Sean, this is really a good post. So many people (and I have been there) carry anger.
It is very important to determine the root cause and then do the the things that make you feel better.
Often it is stress related. it can also be hormone imbalance as mine was due to a pituitary iregularity that can cause depression.
Being in tune with your feelings helps you catch things thought before they get out of hand.
Besides feeling angry only damages your health and ruins your life.
Its excellent you admit to having felt this way. It encourages others by allowing them to realize they are ‘normal’
thanks
Jayne
Hi Jayne! Thanks for your kind words, I’m happy you enjoyed the post.
You’re right about finding the root cause, that’s the most important thing for sure.
I can totally relate to being angry because of unneeded stress. I’m beginning to see that most of our stress is completely unnecessary and can be easily avoided by doing exactly as you said, being in tune with your feeling and thoughts.
Great comment Jayne, thanks so much
Sean, I just left a message but it seemed to disappear. not sure if this comment is set up to hide comments until approved. I will wait and see before I go through writing another as it was quite long.
Hi Sean,
I find that turning off the mind chatter helps as you say as well as getting outside. Also it helps me to focus on what I’m grateful for when I’m dealing with anger.
Usually, distraction like a book, movie, music or something along those lines is helpful to me as well, and separating myself from the anger gives me perspective that I wouldn’t have if I let myself fester in it.
Great post!
Heather
Awesome additions to add to the list Heather! Doing something positive that can take our minds off the clutter is great.
Thanks for your comment!
I have little angry person. This is great tip for me to control my anger thank you.
Hey Sean,
All of your suggestions were great. I especially like #2 Go Out Into Nature. Being in a natural setting does wonders for restoring balance.
Very good tips, cool
Everyone becomes angry at one time or another. In such moments you feel like letting go of everything and if you are not careful this are the moments when you do many things that you end up regretting. Managing anger by using the different approaches you have mentioned on this post is the way to go whenever you feel angry or upset about something or someone.
{ 2 trackbacks }