Meeting Anger with Love

 

As a leader, you’ll interact with all emotions - yours and others.

There is a quote by Marcus Antonius that says, “Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.”

Anger is an emotion that has come up in the last two years for people. So let’s look at it as a way to better self-manage and as a way to help others through it too. 

People are dealing with emotions based on things that are not always in their control. So how do we make the most of this emotion by noticing it and dealing with it? We’ll look at this because doing so can change your life. 

Anger is a surface emotion. Anger is something people lean on when they want to get attention. They or you may not even be aware you are using this. Underneath the core feeling of anger there is generally hurt, pain, and fear. Meeting your true feelings with kindness can allow you great freedom. 

When we are angry, kindness is not always what we think of first. Physically the body tightens, contracts and burns when in anger. Be aware of your body in these moments. When you are aware of the physical sensations that are happening to you or with others, allow yourself to feel what is present. 

As a leader, do you expect perfection of yourself and others? My guess is you might have autosuggestion that is harsher than you might imagine playing in the background of your life. You might not think of this as anger - but it is. The solution is to meet your anger with love. 

Oftentimes when someone is angry they love to tell “the story” of what happened to them - over and over and over again. It is like an out-of-control record playing on repeat. Most of the time, these anger stories are not serving us. This isn’t denying that something bad happened to you but that you simply get to decide how long you let it hold you captive. 

Angry people focus on what they want or them being right but if they come to others from a place of collaboration and harmony, there isn't much room for separation and disharmony. Living in the emotion of anger is an easy way to push people away, scares them, make them fight back, or make them shut down.

Lovingly investigate what has been triggered in you, and your whole perspective on the citation will shift. Opening up a place in your heart and mind to see and hear all the possibilities of what happened and what can happen next will liberate you from the injustice of it all.

Leaders help themselves by dealing with their own feelings of anger and help others through the process of it too. At the end of the day, anger is an emotion that is saying, “there is something more here to look at”.

Best, 

Manal