Negative emotions the downfall to successful anger management, health, and recovery.

Negative emotions can cause a person to lose focus on themselves, their recovery and anger management. Ineffectively managing anger has many life threatening results from heart disease to stroke, anxiety and depressions, substance abuse, alcoholism, and obesity.  It is pertinent to find ways to change negative thoughts and emotions to live a healthy stress-free successful life.

Anger is an emotion that all of us deal with on a daily basis. It might come in the form of little annoyances  or hardcore rage. Nonetheless anger is not the issue the process of how a person manages their anger is the problem.

The problem is not only for the person that is standing on the other side of someones anger. The angry person also suffers from this emotion both physically and mentally. The sooner a resolution is found the faster the anger becomes less life threatening.

The greatest enemy of success is negative emotions and these negative emotions play a huge part in our being angry. Negative emotions such as: Fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy, rejection, feelings of inferiority, abandonment, rationalization ultimately lead to anger. How can we find a way to get these emotions out of our life once and for all or at least stop them from controlling our lives and becoming the secondary emotion of anger?

1.    Stop justifying behavior.  Negative emotions are brought on by justification. It is true. When we justify our emotions we are saying that I am allowed to feel this way and therefore if I can feel this then my anger is justified too. We continue to give our emotions strength every time we tell the story of why we feel the way we do. Every time we tell the story we relive the event and thus produce that chemical ADRENALINE and it causes the thoughts that we choose to justify this emotion. We crave the chemical rush of adrenaline so we retell the story that leads to our anger over and over. When we give power and justification to our negative emotions we are giving power to feelings that eventually lead to our downfall, sickness, struggle, and complacency.

If we truly want to manage our anger, we have to stop justifying our anger and the primary emotions responsible. The example I used in group today was this:

Suppose you are late for work and you run to the train, you make it to the stop and get on the first train that pulls into the station, you board and everything is fine, until the man next to you gets sick and the train is stopped and you are stuck in the tunnel. Immediately stress build up, you go from relief to upset in seconds and panic ensues. Now what do you do? I used to take this time swearing and cussing under my breath, pacing and fidgeting and worrying about all the negative outcomes of being late. The train eventually moves and I get to the appointment on time, but I still went through so many mood altering emotions that I do not feel right the rest of the day. To finish this off, I have to relieve the traumatic experience five more times when I tell the story to each individual I meet throughout the day.

Now I think back about this and I ask myself what did any of it accomplish? Nothing but causing me to grow older faster, to sweat needlessly, to worry about excuses because I have poor time-management skills, and worse of all it creates a feeling of anger and tenseness in my body that I cannot easily overcome.

 How do I do things differently today?

Today I look at things from the positive side. I am always early. I am never victim to the public transportation or the untimeliness of the MTA.  The night before I ready my, clothes, bag, and lunch if I am brown bagging it. I awake, go to the gym, run shower, spend some time with my husband if he is awake and then leave the house. I am always early and prepared and I feel much better about the day. I do not like to be worried about time. I still have a long way to go to develop the patience of a stoic but I am getting better.

   2. Stop worrying about what others are thinking or saying.

I used to be horrible when it came to other people. I felt they were always staring at me and forming opinions and judgments. To a degree I was right. For years I chose to dress and wear my hair on the outer fringes of society. I mean crusty punk homeless attire is not the look for the NYC Subway. I would feel people slide away from me, catch their eyes tearing away at me, or just plain moving away from the anger I let flow from me.  I have made many changes in my appearance and attitude and people don’t even recognize me any longer. Unless I am letting my anger or emotions get the best of me and staring like I am a rabid dog.

Nevertheless even though I fit in now I tend to think I am a mind reader and I sometimes let my old paranoia get the best of me and this is dangerous. I feel others might still be judging me or laughing at me or making a comment about me. Why?

Who is John Makohen and why the hell would someone need to form an opinion about me and what I am doing? The answer is that they don’t and I am being paranoid. If I am not being paranoid then I have to look at the situation as if it doesn’t really matter because who is the person that is actually formulating that opinion of me to me. The y are no one.  Why do I care and why do I have to let this spark my ire?

I am not a victim. I am a survivor. I am not a failure. I am a success. I am not scared of anything another’s words or idea can do to me because I have done worse to myself. I have been to the edge of the volcano and back and lived. I owe myself the best life possible and by no means can I afford to let the opinions of others stand in my way.

  3.      Accountability!

Get over yourself and become accountable for your actions in the past in the present. If you want to have a very successful future you need to do this. You need to be accountable. I have grown a bunch in the past few years and accountability is one of my strongest personality traits these days. I do not blame anything on anyone. I have accepted responsibility for everything that has ever happened to me. I have forgiven everyone that I held responsible for many years. I chose the life I lived. I didn’t need any excuses, but it felt so much better blaming others for all of my shortcomings, failures, relapses, and whatever else screwed me up at the time.  Accountability feels good. The moment I became accountable for my actions and my life was the moment I became a man. I am still a boy most of the time, but I have matured more in the past 3 years than I have in my whole life. I owe it all to the word accountable.

4.     Lastly I never rationalize, minimize, intellectualize.    Al l of these concepts just get me into trouble and lay blame somewhere else. These types of explanations for my behavior never lead to a justifiable reason for my actions. They just spread blame and make me look foolish in the end. Internationalization was always my best form of rationalization and it never accomplished much of anything. It sure did make me like stupid and ignorant though.

To sum it up I would like to say that Brian Tracy has made me take a look at how far I have come in my life in the past few years. I am on the road to success. I am worthy of a great life and I am taking the steps towards self-realization and actualization. I am happy with where I am at today.  I have lifted myself from the gutter. I smile today instead of frown. I can accept a compliment today instead of poking fun at myself and progress. Most of all I have people in my life today who believe in me and that helps so much. It makes me proud to be Johnny.

Blog was written while reading Brian Tracy’s book titled: GOALS.

What I have read so far seems very interesting and informative.  Comment below  about the post or if  you read Goals by Brian Tracy and what did you take away from it?