Anger – one of our most useful emotions!

Anger is as useful as it is intense.  In fact it can lead to the deepest insights and potential for change than perhaps any other emotion.

Anger points us to what matters.  It urges us to take action to become more aligned with our values.  In many cases, urging us to speak up, take a stand, and be counted once and for all!  Honouring our anger peacefully and assertively can be liberating.  When we become aligned with our truth and values, we reclaim our personal power – which is based in courage (not power over others which is based in fear).

What is the message behind anger?
Anger alerts us to maintain or restore proper boundaries.  Boundaries are our values / needs – such as our need for respect, or honesty, or safety, or contribution, and so on.  Questions we could ask when a boundary is crossed are:  “what needs to be protected,” and “what needs to be restored?”

Anger you feel when others are incongruent
Highly sensitive people can experience anger in the presence of someone who is incongruent.  In this case, the anger is an alarm that lets us know when we are interacting with a person who is not what s/he appears to be, who is in fact wearing a mask of happiness, friendliness, courage or control when s/he is actually feeling aggressive, fearful, sad, etc.  The most efficient way to read the message behind anger is to first check if someone has stepped over a boundary.  If not, then the person may simply be incongruent.  By asking the question, “What is the emotion behind the mask, and is it directed toward me?”  we may determine whether the person is hiding something in order to take unfair advantage of us, or if s/he is simply sad (angry, fearful) for  personal reasons and doesn’t want to bring it up in a social situation.  In the case of the latter, the anger often dissipates when we notice the incongruity and realise the person has the potential to act unpredictably because of a conflicted emotional state.  In the case of the former, the anger will not lift until we take more specific action to protect ourselves.

Emotions that are not yours
Emotions are contagious.  If you cannot get to the source of the anger, and you were not feeling angry until you interacted with others, the anger you are feeling may not be yours.

Ineffective strategies for dealing with anger
Most of us have never been taught what this important emotion is trying to tell us, let alone how to express it and work with it.  When we openly expressed anger at an early age, we were most likely told that we were being inappropriate.  Consequently we developed strategies that were ‘socially acceptable.’  We learned to:

  • Ignore it
  • Suppress it
  • Project it – blame others (including ‘taking it out’ on innocent others)
  • Mask it (as sadness or grief)

None of these strategies work in the longer term, and left unchecked, they can intensify and sabotage us.

Working with anger

  1. This fiery emotion can cause a chemical release that temporarily shuts down our rational, thinking brain for a period of time – the length is dependent on a number of factors such as the intensity of the emotion being felt.  This period is known as the refractory period.  During the refractory period, pause and do not react.
  2. To help return to mental clarity, focus on the breath, or move: take a walk, remove yourself from the situation, spend time in nature, clean the house…
  3. Name your emotion and notice it’s sensation in your body.  Once you experience a strong emotion, the best way to ensure it doesn’t intensify is to acknowledge (or name) the emotion and feel it – without judgment.  This may initially be unpleasant, but it will diminish.  (Just like children who want to get your attention, their behaviour will continue to get worse until you pay attention.)
  4. Own it (keep to “I” statements and do not blame others – eg. “I feel really angry because I think I have the right skills and I want to be included in the project”).
  5. Ask where or why you needed boundaries.
  6. With returned mental clarity, diminished emotional charge, insights to what boundary needs to be restored or maintained, you can take peaceful, assertive, and appropriate action.

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Emotional intelligence – our ability to manage our behavior, navigate social complexities, make personal decisions, and influence others for beneficial outcomes – is commonly accepted as a key indicator of professional (and personal) success.

Here are 6 more reasons to improve your emotional intelligence

Emotions are:

  1. Not private – no matter how hard we try to conceal our emotions,  our faces and body language convey our emotions
  2. Contagious – others will catch our emotions (this is directly proportional to how much others perceive us to be important to their well-being)  – this is especially important for leaders to understand
  3. Necessary to make decisions – we literally cannot make decisions if our thinking brain is cut off from the limbic system (emotions)
  4. Messages from our bodies about our internal and external environment that can help us make better choices
  5. Persistent and will ‘plague’ us until we acknowledge them
  6. Controlling us when they are subconscious (ie. we are not aware of them; they are suppressed or ignored)

Emotional intelligence can be learned
“But,” says Daniel Goleman, psychologist, author, and leading expert in the field of emotional intelligence, “the process is not easy.”  Research indicates that emotional intelligence is best learned through practice and feedback.  Goleman says most training programs target the area of the brain that governs analytical and technical ability.  Since emotional intelligence is governed by another part of the brain – the limbic system, this approach can actually have a negative impact.

Working with the horses provides an intensive learning laboratory to practice, which combined with their unfiltered, immediate, and undeniable feedback, accelerates our learning and development of emotional intelligence.

How present are you?

When clients greet the horses they sometimes comment that the horses seemed to ignore them.  When I ask them what do they observe that leads to that conclusion, they usually say the horses look distant, or they feel invisible to the horses.  One client said, “the horses seem vacant:  the lights-are-on-but-no-one-is-home.”The horses aren’t ignoring the clients.  They are mirroring or matching the clients’ energy-awareness.  So if the horses are ‘vacant’ what might this mean for clients?  Where has their energy-awareness gone?

After checking with clients, it seems that sometimes part of their energy-awareness is elsewhere – such as with a work challenge or relationship conflict, and sometimes it is on unresolved issues that get put on the ‘back burner,’ or in the ‘too hard pile.’  And sometimes we deliberately choose to present only part of ourselves while keeping other parts hidden.

So the energy-awareness we have left is what we bring to our personal and professional relationships.  The amount of this energy-awareness we have determines how present we are, and consequently how effective we are in all our relationships.

When our energy-awareness is scattered, we are not actually present.  This is surprising for most people.  Many believe that if we physically show up, and we are focused on what we are doing, we are present.

When the horses respond to us by acting like ‘cardboard cut-outs,’ it’s a good indication that we have allowed too much of our energy-awareness to be scattered, trapped or held back.  The horses won’t engage with us, because we are ‘not there.’  We are literally giving little or no energy to the relationship, so we are getting the same back.  This also translates to our relationships with humans!

Ways to recover your energy-awareness

  • You can ground yourself – it can be as simple as paying full attention to your breath for 1 full minute.
  • Practice non-judgment – this is very liberating, and frees up heaps of energy.
  • Make a mental ‘to-do list’ of what your current challenges are – and make a commitment to consciously work on them.   The commitment is a promise to yourself that you will work to resolve your challenges – which has the effect of freeing up energy, much like a written to-do list seems to free up space in the mind.
  • Practice self-awareness –notice your thoughts and feelings without judgment.
  • Meditate to cultivate a still mind.

Giving is receiving

It’s human nature to greet someone and want them to like you.  In our programs I always ask participants to greet the horses, and often they tell me the horses were indifferent, or ignored them, or didn’t like them.  And sometimes I ask, “what expectations did you have?”  Usually the answer is something like, “I wanted the horse to like me.”  Loosely translated, this is saying “what can you give me,” or “what can I get or take from you?”

When we want something from someone, we energetically broadcast that wanting.  It has the quality of lack and neediness, and others sense it – horses and humans. In our last Waterhole Gathering, I invited the group to greet the horses with a different perspective:  “what can I give to you?” I suggested that the group offer acceptance, peace, gratitude and love to the horses as they greeted them.

What happened next was amazing: twenty people walking around greeting twelve horses – who were all at liberty.  The horses gradually closed in on the group of people, and soaked up the ‘giving’ energy.  Horses and humans were not separate – they looked like they all belonged together.  The stillness and calm that prevailed was so powerful, that no one wanted it to end.

If I were to interpret the horses’ responses, I’d say that they felt safe, accepted, and acknowledged so they wanted to be closer.  It seems that in giving, we are receiving – as the horses showed us by the way they responded to the group.

According to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, author of Non Violent Communication, the greatest gift we can give to another is the gift of being heard, seen, and known.  This is what horses do naturally.  They see beyond our masks and stories to the being inside.  We feel naked in their presence, and at the same time we feel validated and liberated.  We can drop all the walls and layers and simply just be.

We finished by reflecting on how this approach could change the quality of our human relationships – with our families, our spouses, our colleagues, our clients, our communities…  Why not give it a go, and see how it might change your relationships?

Mindfulness is a means to an end

Contemporary philosophers as well as those of ancient traditions teach that we are creative beings.  We have the unlimited power to manifest conditions, experiences, circumstances, and even objects through thought, intention, and emotional resonance.  This power extends to what we might call ‘super natural’ abilities where we can for example, be telepathic, teleport, or even shape shift.

There are untold numbers of courses, workshops, and books on the “law of attraction,” how to manifest abundance, etc.  And while we may have moderate success using these techniques, our real and unique power continues to evade us – for good reason.

Imagine the devastation if this power were in the ‘wrong hands.’  Fortunately we have a built-in safety mechanism: we have to become fully conscious and responsible for our energy – ie. what we say, think, do, believe, and hold (as in our baggage – the experiences we have not released).  This requires self-mastery.

Self-awareness and mindfulness are not just processes to improve productivity, enhance relationships, be more creative, better leaders, reduce stress and maintain equanimity.  They are the means to an end:  the pathway to self-mastery.

Self-mastery means that we are fully conscious and responsible – for every thought, intention, emotion, action, and belief.   We have attained a constant state of equanimity.  We don’t have any ‘sleeping monsters’ ready to strike when the right button is pressed.  We accept ourselves and others unconditionally.  We have released our outdated beliefs, strategies and stories.  We know that we are a part of the whole, and not separate.  We know that what we ‘do’ to others we do to ourselves.  This includes the planet and everything/one on it.

Since every thought, intention, emotion, belief, and story/experience transmits energy, we are literally beacons sending out a particular frequency and attracting the same resonating frequency back.  It can’t be any other way.  What we transmit also gets added to the collective whole.  This is why we can’t have peace in the world until there is peace in our hearts.

We may continue to live our lives with perhaps moderate success, or fulfillment, but we will never experience the powerful beings that we are – where all we experience on a ‘bad’ day is sheer joy – until we attain self-mastery.

Vulnerability – the greatest indicator for success

One of my teachers recently explained that the ability to be in a healthy state of vulnerability will be an essential ‘skill’ for us to navigate the coming times and changes ahead.

However, in apparent contradiction, all the definitions on vulnerability that I found give this emotion a bad rap:

Vulnerability refers to the inability to withstand the effects of a hostile environment.”

Susceptible to physical or emotional injury.”

Synonyms:  weakness, defenselessness, helplessness, openness, exposure, liability

According to Linda Kohanov, author of the Tao of Equus, “vulnerability marks the point at which an old coping strategy, behaviour pattern or perception of the world is being challenged – or a previously repressed part of the self is being revealed.

In any aspect of our lives – whether in business or personal, the value of being vulnerable is that it has the potential to open us up to new ways of being and acting.

In fact, in business today – more than any other time in history, vulnerability might be the greatest indicator of success.  We are seeing systems and structures collapsing – in all sectors:  finance, economy, employment, the media, governments …  Those who hold tightly to the ‘old’ ways of thinking and behaving, including their beliefs – attempting to prop up the crumbling systems and structures are facing a great deal of resistance as no amount of effort will restore the old ways.  When we are not open to change and the possibilities it presents, we cannot be creative with what might be emerging, and opportunities are missed.  Our resistance will be our downfall.

On a personal level, feeling vulnerable is to be open and transparent.   When we are being open, we are being congruent (where our outer expression matches our inner thoughts and feelings) and we enable others to do the same.  The opposite – being closed and protective creates a sense of separateness, competition, and lack of trust.  We cannot create peace within ourselves, with others, or on the planet with this stance.

On a spiritual level, feeling vulnerable is necessary for our evolution: evolution brings us to a new and expanded state of awareness where we must let false beliefs dissolve into the nothingness that they are.  Perhaps the scary part of letting go of our beliefs is discovering who we might be without them.

Stepping into the zone of uncertainty

A local horse expert uses three embedded circles to illustrate our learning zones:  the inner circle is the comfort zone – where little learning and creativity happens, the middle circle is the zone of uncertainty where we are vulnerable and the most learning and creativity happens, and the outer circle is the “Oh sh*t” zone where we are in fight, flight or freeze modes and no learning or creativity can take place.

Our challenge is to learn to move in the zone of uncertainty, while using all our resources to be in the flow of change with discernment.

According to Kohanov, the message behind the emotion of vulnerability is:  “something significant is about to change or be revealed.”  Questions we can ask ourselves to develop discernment are:  “What is the threat?”  “What action must I take to move to a position of safety?”

The art of being vulnerable

Being vulnerable and staying safe on all levels requires discernment.  We have to engage all our resources to make wise, conscious choices.  We need to bring all of our intelligences – body, emotions, and spirit as well as the mind into balance and not rely just on the mind.  As our bodies are highly refined receivers / transmitters and our emotions carry information necessary to make any kind of decision, we must learn to give them as much voice as our mind.

Meditation allows the mind to settle.  When the mind is still, an expanded awareness comes forth.  The voices of our bodies and emotions can be heard and our inner knowing has a chance to reveal its wisdom.

Mindfulness practices also give us the necessary skills to be discerning and present.  It creates the gap between stimulus and response.

These practices help us to be vulnerable in a healthy, conscious way so that we may be in the zone of uncertainty and move with the shifting times with ease and grace.