How to avoid getting angry at work and in your personal life
In this article, you will discover how to avoid getting angry for nothing and keep more calm in both your personal and professional life.
If you wish, a life coach can help you progress more quickly in managing your emotions and achieving your goals.
By practicing the tips, I will present in this article, you will begin to regain control of your emotions, thoughts and actions to change your life for the better.
Here is a brief summary of my tips:
1 – Develop your self-esteem
2 – Make sure you have understood the message
3 – Learn to be more assertive by using your emotions
4 – Give a different meaning
5 – Forgive your conversational partner
6 – Change the topic
7 – Leave the conversation peacefully
1 – Develop your self-esteem
The higher your self-esteem, the less sensitive you will be to the opinion others will have of you, their judgments and criticisms.
Self-esteem is intimately linked to self-love or rather to the unconditional acceptance of your uniqueness.
This unicity includes as many qualities as defects and thus as many innate capacities as possibilities of development.
It is by accepting and becoming aware of what represents you and what differentiates you that you will be able to strengthen your self-esteem day after day throughout your life.
Self-esteem also includes the self-confidence to know that you are capable of successfully completing a given project. Self-confidence is built from your experiences but also from the meaning you give to those same experiences.
Reinforcing both self-acceptance and self-confidence will allow you to strengthen your self-esteem and to better manage your interactions with your personal and professional environment.
A life coach can help you build self-esteem to easily achieve your professional and personal goals.
Now that you have understood the importance of developing self-esteem to better manage interactions with others, the next step is to make sure you have understood the message of your interlocutor.
2 – Make sure you have understood the message
Before you get angry with someone in your professional or personal life, make sure you correctly understand the person’s message.
Very often conflicts arise from a misunderstanding of the interactions with people around you.
A very effective way to improve your communication is to practice active listening or empathic listening.
The objective of this communication tool is to become aware of what the person you are talking to is feeling without interpreting what he or she is saying and by regularly checking what you have understood.
If you wish to improve your communication at work as well as in your personal life, I invite you to discover our active listening training or to read our e-book on active listening.
In summary, the next time you feel like getting angry, make sure you fully understand the situation.
It is very likely that the person you are talking to has no desire to make you angry and is not aware of his or her own behavior.
Now that you’ve realized the importance of understanding the message, the next tip is to learn to become more assertive by correctly using your emotions.
3 – Learn to be more assertive by using your emotions
Instead of exploding and completely losing control because you are experiencing your emotions, start using your emotions more effectively.
One way to do this is to assert yourself by making your emotions speak for themselves.
Asserting yourself consists of explaining what you think and feel in a determined and respectful way without hiding part of your message out of fear of the reaction of others and avoiding entering into a conflictual relationship.
If you are angry, say it, if you feel upset say it, if you feel offended say it based on what you are feeling. If you think that your difficulty in expressing yourself depends on your laziness, I invite you to discover the article how to overcome laziness.
By communicating your emotions and feelings about what the other person is saying, you let she or he to know how you feel. In this way, you create a new opportunity to clarify the situation and allow others to do the same with you.
Moreover, by expressing yourself openly and in a caring manner, you allow your emotions to express themselves and this will have the effect of reducing their intensity.
In short, you regain control of the conversation while using your emotions to feel better and communicate more effectively.
If you are experiencing major difficulties asserting yourself because of your beliefs, I invite you to discover the article how to overcome your limiting beliefs.
Now that you have understood the importance of using your emotions to your advantage to assert your point of view, the next tip is to learn how to give a different meaning to what the other person is saying.
4 – Give a different meaning
If, despite using your emotions to assert yourself, you still feel angry, you can take the message back and give it a different meaning that makes you feel better and use the experience to your advantage.
A useful ploy to do this is to use different words with a more positive meaning to describe and interpret the situation differently.
Another very effective way to regain control of your emotions is to give an alternative meaning to the speaker’s message.
The more you practice, the more you will become an expert at regularly questioning your feelings, perceptions and understanding of each situation.
Take the time necessary to find several interpretations of the situation and continue until you find another meaning over which you can exert direct control in order to progress in your personal or professional life.
Now that you have understood the importance of giving a different meaning to what the person is saying, the next piece of advice is to forgive your interlocutor.
5 – Forgive your conversational partner
One of the reasons you feel angry is because you think the person in front of you wants to hurt you and generally doesn’t like you.
To avoid getting upset, you may decide to simply forgive the person you are talking to.
There are several solutions that you can use to achieve this result.
You can tell yourself that your interlocutor has an unpleasant attitude because he or she reacts negatively to what is happening to him or her in his or her personal or professional life.
You can decide that he is afraid of you or that he has low self-esteem and that his unpleasant behavior is just a way to protect himself.
You can imagine that he doesn’t love himself enough or even hates himself and that the hatred he shows is not directed at you but rather at himself.
You can think that this person is jealous of you, of your success, of your freedom and that your actions represent for him a questioning that he is not yet ready to carry out.
You may tell yourself that this person is simply repeating a habitual way of behaving which, over time, has become his preferred way of behaving with others.
It doesn’t matter what meaning you choose. The important thing is that it allows you to give a different understanding to the situation, to what you think and feel in order to improve the quality of communication and to progress even in the most difficult cases.
If you need to go further on this subject, a life coach can offer you a tailor-made support to reach your goals.
Now that you have understood the importance of forgiving your partner, the next piece of advice is to direct the conversation towards another subject.
6 – Change the topic
If the person you are talking to does not want to let go, you may decide to change the subject in order to redirect the situation towards other, less conflictual themes.
The important thing is to find a way to divert attention and emotions to another target.
You can also ask a question on another topic or simply suggest moving on to another topic.
If you know the person well, you can move on to another topic that interests him or her and is less conflictual.
If this doesn’t work, try to interrupt their behavioral pattern with something unexpected, such as standing up, looking away, asking them to look in a different direction, asking a question that is unrelated to the discussion, giving them a compliment, asking for their opinion or advice on a particular topic.
The important thing is to help him or her get out of the behaviors that is trapping him or her and redirect the conversation towards more effective and enjoyable communication.
Now that you’ve learned the importance of changing the subject to protect the relationship with the other person, the next tip is to leave the conversation peacefully.
7 – Leave the conversation peacefully
If all previous attempts fail and the other person wants to drown you in these conflicting behavioral patterns, you may decide to abandon the conversation.
But instead of being controlled by your emotions, you will use your emotions again to be assertive in expressing how you feel in this conversation.
For example, you may say that you feel tired or disappointed by what happened during this conversation and that you need to think about it more calmly in order to take it up again later.
If you wish and if possible, you can also propose a date for another discussion.
To complete this process, once you get home or, better still, after a good night’s sleep, you can send an email to summarize what you felt during this discussion and invite your interlocutor to do the same.
In this e-mail you can also suggest solutions or topics that you would like to discuss in the future.
The most important thing is to express your emotions without negatively affecting the quality of the relationship you have built with this person.
Final conclusion on how to avoid getting angry
In this article, I have presented you with several tips to avoid getting angry and regain control of the situation in the different contexts of your personal or professional life.
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