How To Be Less Angry?

Being angry at another person is only mad at yourself, and realizing this is only able to be digested and fully integrated through breath and humor. 

Why Do We Get Angry

People get angry for a variety of reasons, but typically it is because of an uncomfortable situation that seems to be repeating itself or because of strain in our relationships. There are four easy and simple steps to fall back in your better feeling self.

Step 1: Accept your anger

If we, in the moment, attempt to suppress the feelings that we have, we are telling ourselves that our emotions are not valid.

Step 2: Practice breathing through your anger

The breath must be practiced in times of peace and calm in meditation. If we are only focusing on your breathing when we are stressed and upset, then we will subconsciously associate the things. When my four-year-old daughter, Lincoln, gets angry, I have a beautiful practice to bring her back to her breath and finding her center. We've meditated together since she could sit up straight, but in the last few months, we have gotten out of practice. I have noticed that there have recently been times where, when she gets upset about something, that she tells me that she CAN'T breathe. "It is too hard," she says. I realized this was because she was not practicing associating her breath with peace, and had a few months of really only focusing on her breath when she was attempting to calm herself down. Once we introduced meditation back into our routine, within a week, she was able to self-soothe again.

Step 3: Realize that you are only angry at yourself

Perhaps you made a poor decision, and maybe you trusted the wrong person. Whatever it is, realize that you are allowed to make mistakes and do your best to stop blaming yourself for your situation. Bad things happen, and that's okay. The only way then to deal with looking at yourself being angry at yourself is to introduce some humor into the situation.

Step 4: Practice being angry and transforming it into humor

Laughing and experiencing light-heartedness is a stronger emotion than anger. It holds more weight and takes up more space in your awareness. When we are angry, we can still keep other thoughts and do other things, but they are done with less presence. The same is true for a genuinely humorous experience, but the OTHER capacities of your abilities are improved. We FEEL better when we laugh, and when we are finished laughing. If we get stuck in the loop, though, of just getting angry/upset or disturbed, it can be helpful to practice transitioning anger to humor in our meditations.

For today, find a guided meditation to practice associating your breath with stillness and to practice the transition of anger to humor.