How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 480
Common Ingredients of Anger:
Unfairness – We believe that we have been treated unfairly. We tell
ourselves that we deserve more, and we buy into this story that
someone has wronged us.
Lost - We feel that we have lost something that we have identified
ourselves with. Feelings, pride, money, car, job.
Blame – We blame other people or external situations for having
caused our loss, for taking advantage of us unfairly. The blame often
only resides in our heads and is a product of our imagination. We fail
to see things from other people’s perspectives. We become deeply
selfish.
Pain - We experience pain, mental distress, and anxiety. The pain
causes physical responses in our body, which disturbs our natural
energy flow and state of wellbeing.
Focus - We focus on the thing we don’t want, and energize it by
complaining about it passionately, and repeating it to as many
people who will listen. This creates a downward spiral of anger.
“What we focus on expands”, this is true regardless of the emotion.
The interesting thing is that if there are two angry people unhappy with
each other, both people feel a sense of loss, unfairness, pain and the
need to blame the other person. Who is right? The answer is: both are
right and both are wrong.
Why Should We Bother with Overcoming Anger?
Negative emotions like anger kick us into survival mode, as if saying to
our body, “we are in danger”. There is a physiological change that takes
place in our body to prepare us for fight or flight. These physical
responses disrupt the natural flow of energy in our body – affecting our
heart, immune system, digestion and hormone production. A negative
emotion is therefore toxic to the body and interferes with its
harmonious functioning and balance.
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