Tag: articulate

Anger is not usually looked at as a teaching tool. It is often seen as something that can be
useful in protecting a person from unfairness. It also is often seen as a destructive set of
feelings that can destroy relationships and lead to failure at work,family relationships,
friendships and in a myriad of other social settings that require a person to not allow anger to be
a destructive force. When a person begins to see how anger is causing problems in their lives
and recognizes it is a negative force that is hurting them and causing them great grief, it is time
to take a look at how anger is hurting you as well as how you can use it as a teaching tool. The
obvious question is how can someone do this? In order to have effective anger beyond the need
for self-preservation and setting appropriate boundaries when unfairness cannot be tolerated,
the important thing is that all people have flaws and failings that can lead us to have anger with
them. It can even be appropriate anger that we can choose to overlook or minimize. The
problem is that too many persons cut people out of their lives due to unreasonable anger,
whether it be in a marriage, family relationships, friendships, work relationships, or any type of
interaction that we have with persons. We can let anger be a teaching tool if we are really willing
to learn how to let anger go and deal with it more appropriately. A way to do this is to develop
our sense of human compassion, love , spirituality and recognizing there will always be people
who offend us to one degree or another that will include some really good people. We need to
take a compassionate view of people we interact with, and give them the benefit of the doubt
and realize that most slights may be remembered and not appreciated, but are not of a type we
want to end friendships or have ongoing anger that ultimately Impacts us both physically and
emotionally in a very negative way. Trying to understand what motivates other persons and
recognize that life is difficult for even persons that seem immune to stress and give them the
benefit of the doubt can make for a far more positive life for us. You will find people who have
many friends overlook flaws and slights and make themselves available to friends and others in
an open manner and are rewarded with less anger and more happiness. Another thing to do to
let anger be a teaching tool is not to take ourselves too seriously and not be out measuring
unfairness by the teaspoon or making sure that we get what we feel we deserve when clearly
we can be picky and unreasonable. Another area of concern that causes great anger in
persons is when we are jealous of the success of other persons or whatever advantage we feel
they have in comparison to us. That is really a destructive use of anger. If we want to use anger
as a teaching tool, we need to celebrate the successes of others and try to learn from them or
accept their circumstances or skill sets are such they are more successful than we are at certain
levels. We need to disable anger by not comparing ourselves with others, but find joy and
satisfaction in both what we have achieved in life and what we can achieve through effort and
seeking out what we desire. The problem with too many persons is that they never really get a
handle on anger and they either have too much of it or in other cases they are not able to
defend themselves and need to learn how to use anger as a tool. The important message here
today is not to have persons not be angry and in effect allow people to take advantage of them
and not be able to set up boundaries that are necessary in life. No, the point is that anger is
something that needs to be a teaching tool to us to help us be more compassionate, more
understanding and broadening our view of why people behave as they do and recognize the
things we may see as slights, and they may be, are not worth being angry about and if we do
not watch out, we will end many friendships that have been very positive in our lives and can
ruin many future friendships through the use of anger. Another basic thought is to try to mellow
out emotionally and just enjoy life as it comes and reserve anger for clear cases of inappropriate
treatment and an important emotion to help you put up boundaries when necessary.