Anger is one of the most common negative behaviours in human beings. Anger makes people act in an irrational manner. And therefore anger causes tremendous amounts of unnecessary destruction. Many who are connected with me have asked me how to manage anger. While I teach many tools on how to manage anger in my learning experiences and in my books, I felt this is an issue where many people need help and I need to find faster methods of reaching more people, hence this blog post.

Firstly we must realize that anger is a behaviour we learn and therefore it is not something permanent in us. We learn new behaviours when we see benefits in such behaviours. Therefore for example at a tender age when we observe our dad getting angry and everyone else doing as per his demands in an attempt to make him calm down, we learn that anger has the power of controlling and we quickly learn to use anger as a tool ourselves.

When behaviour has a positive intent then our sub-conscious mind would not allow us to change that behaviour unless we replace it with an alternate behaviour that has the same positive intent but without the negative consequences. So the first step in managing anger is trying to understand the positive intents or benefits of getting angry. If we continue with the above example: the positive intent of anger helps us influence the behaviour of others.

The next step is to identify alternate behaviour to satisfy the positive intent of being able to influence others. This we can do by being helpful to others, being friendly with others, learning better communication skills etc. Once these are identified it is important to speak to your sub-conscious mind and inform of your decision to change behaviour, assuring that the positive intent will be protected. While simple self-talk will do the job, we do teach methods of communicating with the sub-conscious mind, at our Mastery of Self through Neuro Linguistic Programming [MS – NLP] trainings which needs direct experience to learn. Please click on http://www.ranjandesilva.net/#!mind-power/cpqz for more details of MS-NLP.

Once you inform your sub-conscious about the new plan of action, you need to consciously implement the new behaviours in your life. You need to then be more helpful, friendlier and more attentive to others. Perhaps you need to read a book on how to communicate better or attend training on communication skills. Once you focus on building these new behaviours with the support of the sub-conscious, then you will find yourself getting less angry. Therefore the method of anger management is not to try to force you to be ‘not angry’ but let it happen naturally as you focus on the alternate behaviours.

In addition to this let me introduce you to two more NLP tools to manage anger.

The first tool is called a tranquillity anchor. An anchor is a stimulus that creates an automatic response in us. Anchors can be built by repeating a gesture when you are in a particular mood. Therefore tranquillity anchors can be built by bringing the thumb, index finger and the middle finger together when you are in a peaceful state of mind such as prayer, meditation, relaxing by a beach, playing with kids, listening to soothing music etc. After repeating this many times the brain associates the selected physical gesture [in this case 3 fingers together] with tranquillity. Thereafter when you feel angry you can bring the 3 fingers together to trigger the sense of tranquillity and calm.

Another NLP method is to make a TV commercial of yourselves in your mind’s eye of how you will be 5 years from today if you continue this bad habit of being angry. Also make a positive commercial of you 5 years from now after having given up the bad habit. Keep watching these movies alternatively in your mind to programme the mind to move away from the negative outcome towards the positive outcome by changing the behaviour.

Finally, lets remember life is short and let’s do everything possible to create an enjoyable experience for others and us. Let’s do everything to teach the right behaviours to our next generations so that we can make our contribution in making this world a better place.