3 Simple Anger Management Techniques

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One of the key areas of self improvement that many people, including myself, choose to work on is anger management. It is an area that I’ve paid particular attention to over the past year or so.

What I’ve attempted to do is devise a series of simple anger management techniques that I can apply to virtually any situation. I’m happy to say that through reading some excellent source material and doing some internal soul searching, I’ve come up with what I feel is a fairly effective system.

Before getting into the specifics, let me preface this post by saying that in order to apply anger management techniques to specific situations or stimuli, you first need to be generally contented with your life in the first place or you’ll be managing anger on an almost perpetual basis. This is the so-called “black cloud” syndrome that so many of us fall into when we realize that our day-to-day lives are not what we envisioned or hoped that they would be.

In other words, you need to design a life that you find enjoyable and fulfilling most of the time before you can apply management techniques to the infrequent, anger-inducing things that “pop up” throughout the course of each day. If you’re not there yet, you may want to start working on finding your life’s purpose and meaning.

If you are at that “generally satisfied” point in your life – great! Let’s dive into some strategies to manage your anger so that it becomes much less of a downward pull on your daily life and serenity.

First Things First – Breathe!

In my view, the first thing you absolutely must do is breathe deeply when you begin to sense the feeling anger building up inside you. This takes a lot of practice! But over time you’ll learn to bypass the natural tendency to quickly react and get attuned to the feeling of rising anger in your body. Then simply take a deep breath (or 2). This will not only relax your tightening muscles, but it will also interrupt the knee-jerk anger reaction and give you a moment to think through the 3 step process we are about to discuss below.

The 3 step process:

Step 1 – Assigning Importance

After taking a moment to breathe (and relax), ask yourself this key question; “Will this matter at all next week?”. In almost all cases it will not, and often times it will not matter to any substantial degree in 5-10 minutes … let alone next week.

Once you try this strategy a few times, you’ll begin to realize how often you assign far too much importance to situations and events that really don’t have much meaning in the long-view of your life. An annoying comment, an inconsiderate driver cutting you off, burning your morning bagel … all these things, while certainly irritating, will not matter one bit a week from now.

So why should you engage in the process of destroying your serenity (i.e. get angry) over things that you’ll most likely forget ever happened? The short answer is you shouldn’t, so be sure to first ask yourself this very important question.

Step 2 – Assigning Your Degree of Control

In his landmark book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, author Steven Covey explained an interesting concept that he called the “Center of Concern/Center of Influence”. Basically, most of us have a large circle of things in our lives that concern us, but there is only a small circle of things within that circle that we actually have some degree of control (or influence) over.

Therefore, the very next thing you need to determine is whether the situation that is causing you anger lies within your Circle of Concern or your Circle of Influence. For instance, getting cut-off at an intersection is within our Circle of Concern, but unless you plan on hunting the driver down to give him a piece of your mind (not a wise move) it is not within your Circle of Influence.

However, events such as burning your breakfast are within both Circles because there is something you can actually do about the situation … which then leads us to our next task.

Step 3 – Assigning Your Response

If you determine that the event doesn’t really matter much long-term (step 1 – almost everything falls here), and it’s out of your control (step 2), simply refuse to get all worked up over the situation … period. Calmly decide to simply “let it go”, to the best of your ability, and move on.

However, if you do have some ability to influence or “fix” the anger-inducing event, your response can and should be just as calm. Simply determine exactly what you can do to improve or alleviate the situation, again to the best of your ability, and move on.

Do you sense an underlying theme here? Your goal in all of this is to stay calm, and refuse to let anger get it’s grip on you. Once it does, as I’m sure you’re well aware, your ability to react effectively is crippled and the reaction you do have will more than likely make the situation worse.

You do not need to go there. Stay calm – assess the situation realistically – and take the most effective action that you possibly can if necessary.

Lastly, please understand that your ability to respond appropriately to events that have anger potential will get quicker and more effortless with time and practice. Just hang in there, because I know from personal experience that if you practice these 3 simple anger management techniques continually, you will see amazing progress.

Related posts:

1. 3 Simple Time Management Tips to Supercharge Your Productivity

Tagged as: personal growth, simple anger management techniques