Do you find yourself flying off the handle at the smallest of things? Do you have a ‘short’ fuse?
You can overcome anger, let me give you an incite to how I did.
When you can’t control what’s happening, Challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what’s happening. That’s where your power lies.
Quote by gecko&fly.com
Hello, My Friends,
This week I have been sharing about anger.
Anger gets to tell us a lot about ourselves.
Have you had a look at what it is that continually ‘makes’ you angry?
Are your needs not being met by some-one you expect should be meeting them?
Do you feel that life isn’t giving you what you deserve? And watching others get ahead, makes your blood boil.
Are your efforts not being recognised, or is some-one else taking the credit for the work you have done?
Anger is your friend.
Anger will show you where you are feeling let down, hurt, hard done by, or unappreciated.
A. N. G. E. R.
Always
New
Gifts
Emotions
Reveal
How I began to overcome my issues with anger was to forgive myself. You know, for all the times I wasn’t the woman I knew I could be. For the high and unobtainable standards that I had for myself. The perfection I was always striving for and never, ever attaining.
Forgiveness of myself is an on-going process, I am human and as a human I make mistakes and I treat myself badly. I have those internal beat up sessions. You know the ones, Where you call yourself all the mean girl things, ( you’ll never get it right, you’re a lump of lard, why can’t you just …..) These are the hurtful words we wouldn’t allow others to say to us, without taking offence, yet we are so liberal with them on ourselves. These are the types of inner forgiveness that I am continually working on.
Secondly: I forgave those in my life, who I perceived, had done me wrong. This I must admit was not easy, Forgiving people from my past who I thought had created unwanted events in my life, caused me to struggle. I learned to forgive the kids for being kids and walking across my freshly polished kitchen floor, and for all the times they’d driven me crazy. At the same time I forgave myself for all the times I’d yelled at them, justified or otherwise. I forgave my parents for ‘everything’. I blamed them for almost every decision I had ever made. This too is an ongoing path on my journey of life. As I discover new and uncharted areas of my life, I also discover wounds that need healing and people and situations that need forgiving. (I will cover my process for forgiveness in another post).
The secret to making forgiveness easy, was when I learned that I am responsible for my life. Me and Me alone. I am the one who makes the choice to respond in what ever way I do.
Now I know some of you reading this won’t agree with me. I didn’t either when I started on this journey. Now I know that by taking the responsibility. I get to be response -able. My life became my choice and the power become mine to do something about what I didn’t like and what I did like. When I am response-able, I get to choose the response that will serve me best. It doesn’t matter what may happen to me from the outside. I get to choose from the inside whether the situation will make me bitter or better.
I also get to choose to put safe boundaries around myself and decide who does and does not get to come into my personal space. I get to choose how I allow other people treat me, or speak to me. ( This is another topic, I’ll cover in the future.)
It all started when I realized I could change my world by changing my thinking.
I could find the one word that described how I was feeling.
Anger was one of my default learned thinking patterns.
Once that word was on paper, I looked for the sentence that was running in the back ground. “How dare she speak to me like that!” “He makes me so mad when he doesn’t do….”
I looked for the emotion behind the words, What was it about the way she spoke to me that caused me to feel embarrassed, ashamed, hurt? Or what was it about him doing or not doing something that triggered my response?
It was usually because I didn’t think I was good enough, or worthy enough, that they didn’t love me, or that they were deliberately trying to hurt me.
Anger was my shield I put up to keep people out and away from realizing I had a low image of myself.
By forgiving myself and others, I could begin to treat myself with respect, to move closer to being happy with who I really am, on the inside. As I’ve become kinder and more loving to myself, it is safer to let other people into my circle of influence.
I have found that my anger evaporates before it causes harm, and if I have a flare up, I know how to disarm it and let it tell me what is going on under the surface.
What about you?
What are your anger triggers?
What do you do when anger shows up and feels uncontrollable?
I can show you how to make ANGER your best friend.
Email me on authenticlivingwithlinda@gmail.com for a coaching session.
You can live your best life, today.
Until next time be your kindest, most authentic self.
Linda Codlin