Be Happy, Don’t Be Angry
May 1st, 2011
The other day a bumper sticker on the car ahead of me made me smile. It says “Anger is punishing yourself for the sins of others.” Being very short-fused, it made me realize that I have been very cruel to myself all my life.
What is anger?
We all know how it feels to be angry, making the question redundant. But let’s see what the experts say of “anger.”
Anger is an emotion related to one’s psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged or denied and a tendency to undo that by retaliation.
Modern psychologists view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and can have a functional value for survival. It can mobilize psychological resources for corrective action.
It can be harmful when uncontrolled, negatively affecting your happiness and fitness. So next time you feel like blowing your top, think about the ways it can come back to you.
Your happiness:
Anger induces similar feelings from the subject of your anger. Even my dogs know when I am angry and don’t dare come near me. If directed at people, it makes negotiations impossible, harms relationships probably permanently. For married couples, it can tire your family, drive your children away. Anger has resulted to a lot of divorces.
Your health:
Prolonged or frequent anger has been shown to cause cardiovascular problems and heart attacks. It can make you feel tired, induce emotional eating, drinking and smoking. Chronically angry people have a 3 times the risk of high blood pressure and heart attack and twice the risk of coronary artery disease than those who are not.
At work:
Studies show that workers who are extremely aggravated are 5 times more likely to be injured and people who are prone to anger have problems holding on to their jobs. They either quit, get fired or forced to take retirement offers. It can cause workers to do counterproductive behavior such as coming in late, absence without official leave, making fun with someone, behaving nastily to a co-worker, blaming others of their own mistakes, trying to look busy while doing nothing, and many others.
Sexual health:
Clinical studies show that anger greatly inhibits sexual desire leading to the termination of a sexual encounter. It can also make couples engage in unsafe or harmful sex.
“Make love, not war,” the buzzword of the flower people of the sixties, is still very much alive, even more necessary, in this more complex world of today. Our newspapers are rife with the deadly and gruesome effects of uncontrolled anger. While majority of us may never be driven to such extremes, it is still worth the effort to control, or avoid, anger. How? In the course of the day, ask yourself these questions:
“What am I thinking of?” and “What am I feeling about?”
If your answers lead to feelings of anger or resentment, then change channels. There may be million things in a day that our outside of our control, but our thoughts always are.
