How to Transform Anger

Description

Anger strongly influences many of our lives, causing us to react to situations instead of acting with awareness. This video shares methods to transform fear so that we are no longer under its influence.

Our online class, ReWilding Your Mind, gives many more tools for shifting our mindset away from a fear- and resistance-based approach to life.

A special thank-you to Fireball Fitness170 for putting together an outline of the video:

6:30 ...if you can accept it be vulnerable to it.... then you can act out of awareness instead of reaction.

13:15....its amazing when you can watch that transformation, if you can turn that person's mind, to experiencing what's actually going on without resistance, ....this actually is not the horrible experience I thought it was.

13:45....go through life trying to manage my anger, first resistence in life, then the anger comes in, manage with tools like: take 3 deep breaths, look for the "expectation", for example don't expect something out of another. Another humans behavior will never perfectly match our expectations.

15:46 ...a basic rule in psychology is that when a stricture is removed the human may rebel against the rule that was holding them down... Freedom from expectation = radical love.

18:08 ...when we resist things we tend to create the problems we are trying to resist...

18:20...being radically vulnerable, which is the same as not having expectation, prevents us from falling into reactivity. From there we can use calmness and awareness to effectively deal with the situation at hand.

24:20...you notice, hey there is that little game that anger is playing...I am not sure I want to play that game anymore... 25:04...mind blindness vs. mind awareness, then apply that fourth step of converting it to humor, ...then you life unfolds in a more positive fashion. anger is transformable, and you can do it.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,overcoming anger,anger management,emotional resilience,emotional intelligence

Video Transcription

someone wrote to me recently and asked me to speak about anger and how do we manage anger from other letters that I've received from from the number of you I know that this is not limited to one person and anger is something that for many of us can feel like it rules our lives we are going through life feeling otherwise normal in our relationships well we have this anger that gets triggered and leaves destruction in its path this video then is not actually about managing anger it's about transforming anger and what I'm going to talk about today applies to all of the quote negative emotions so frustration stress any kind of resistance in fact I think of they're basically being two types of emotions one is resistance based a bee lands on my hand and if I'm resistant to it that's my response the other set of emotions that we can cultivate are emotions of openness or vulnerability vulnerability can seem weak but when that bee lands on our hand and we're vulnerable we're able to just watch it instead of react out of fear if you really want to make shifts in how anger influences your life there's one essential starting point and that is to look inside and see if you believe that anger is an inevitable human trait or if that it's necessary in order to enact change in our lives the argument for anger and the reason that people will say it's not good to get rid of anger isn't that we think of anger as something that inspires change so you've probably all seen that bumper sticker how does it go if you know something like if you're not filled with rage then you're not paying attention and the implication there is that anger is the force that creates change in our life if I if I look out and I see people starving to death some some homeless people I'm not gonna do anything about it unless I start to get angry why is it that there are homeless people in our in our culture how can we have a culture that allows that that then get me to act the flipside these people will say is that if we learn vulnerability we learn to just allow things to happen then we enter a radical acceptance and we just accept things the way they are as homeless people I've accepted it too bad there's something bad happening in my life I go into his then like state I accept it too bad to me this is not at all what transforming anger is about and I do not believe that anger is an inevitable or an important part of the human emotional scheme in fact I would go so far as to say I know this is pretty radical that all those negative emotions the resistance based emotions they don't really need to be in our lives I'm speaking from my own journey I remember as as a team going out in the woods and grabbing a stick and just Oh wailing on every tree I had a lot of anger and I'm sure a lot of you can relate I've in my own relationship with my life I've gone from experiencing a lot of anger to having almost no anger in my personality anymore and because I've been able to experience both sides of this I feel that I can speak to this this question do we need anger when we transform anger it's not about accepting all that is it's about acting out of awareness rather than reaction so the bee lands on me the reaction is this or this which actually you'll notice often causes the sting the radical vulnerability the acceptance it lands sure I'm okay if it stings me I'm cool like this it's gonna sting me anyway but by just watching it it's almost like magic as you saw it lands it just sits there for a little bit I get to enjoy looking at it you couldn't see but it had tons of pollen on its legs then it flies off when I see that homeless person I can look over and with awareness I can look and I can think hmm there's a person that looks like they might need some help then I can go and I can help them no anger necessary in dealing with extreme survival type situations or situations where there's a lot of stressful elements coming in at you same thing if you can accept it be vulnerable to it you can be aware of it not turning yourself off then you can act out of awareness instead of reaction so that's number one decide if you believe that anger is useful or inevitable if you believe that it is then anger will stay in your life because you you've opened up that door for it they're not gonna be the same willingness to really look at it and transform it if you're willing to question anger being inevitable or useful then we can move forward to the next step you may have noticed that I have a plant here and some of you might be familiar with it this is stinging nettle bring it up close here and try to show you it's little stingers okay so you might see all those little thin stingers each one of those is a hypodermic there's a little kind of reservoir behind each of those of a venom and when one of those thorns hits the skin it pushes into that reservoir and pushes the venom into our flesh those of you who have experienced seeing nettle you know that if you get enough of it on you you know just a little CH and it creates a sting it's you know it's not horrible but it's things you it bites you and then over the next five to ten minutes it it grows into a into a burning bitch that can be really intense it's localized in one place it's not so bad if you've ever waded through a bunch of it you know that it can almost drive you insane and some of you may already be figuring out what I'm gonna do with this nettle I'm I'm not doing this show you how tough I am or manly but to show you how there are two different ways to experience a quote- situation with the soft spots you might be able to see a red starting on my body and I'm gonna come up close here and show you what's going on maybe I'll wait a moment and let it start to react a little bit more so what I'm experiencing is this burning all over my whole body and it's need a little bit more than and the reason I'm doing this again is to talk about the root of anger there's something in us that's called expectation now when we have expectation of other people of ourselves or of our environment

the truth is that often that expectation it's not going to be met so the world is organic it's messy and it doesn't behave the way we would like it to behave in our minds when it doesn't that when we can start to get angry expectation ranges from you you know your best friend or your wife and you really are okay it's pretty rough and you're really like hoping that they're gonna make a meal for you when you get home today you come home no meal there was your expectation

it wasn't fulfilled anger develops expectation can also just be the world being the way we think of it and and this is pretty subtle but with pain like this there's an expectation in my mind that my body does not experience constant burning fiery pain and so because that's my my norm that's sort of what I expect in life I mean this happens I can start to get angry right first of all comes the resistance these burns this burns this burns and it does it burns intensely and when I feel that that intensity that physical intensity it's not what I expect it turns into an emotional intensity or resistance to this experience anger blossoms now the cool thing about the world is that even a super intense experience like this I can just experience it when I'm feeling the pain the burning and I resist it it grows the kids and tells what if I actually stop and I feel it it's not really that bad I get to see this with students when they do their first barefoot walk in the snow and for some people their feet you know it hits the ground and it's look at if explicated explicative and all they wanted to do is get out and it's amazing when you can watch the transformation if you can turn that person's mind to just experiencing what's actually going on without resistance

let's time to go wait this actually is not the horrible experience that I thought it was so with anger how exactly does this apply I can go through life trying to manage my anger so I have resistance in my life and when I have that resistance in place the anger comes in and then I'm going to need tools like take three deep breaths it's failing to see the feet the foundation the essential element that allows anger to be or to exist is that expectation that is at the root from that it's the soil it needs to bloom and blossom what if we can get rid of the expectation so in my own relationship with my wife again at some point I discovered that if I'm expecting things out of her then I'm frustrated all the time because she's got her own things going in and guess what she's not gonna meet my expectations 100% of the time maybe not even 50% of the time that's a lot of time me spending in frustration now part of your mind might be going wait if you don't expect anything out of your wife captain she's just going to do nothing so I just would challenge you in your life to give it a try and see if all the bad things that some of you might be imagining will happen if you open up into vulnerability actually happen because in my experience at least when people are given freedom of expectation they might for a little bit right if you try this with your your teenage son

they might for a while we're about because they've been used to being just held down to very strong standards freed from expectation is the same as being radically loved

and I found that when I radically loved Rebecca and I did not have expectations of her her behavior blossomed into something much more amazing than anything I could have engineered by trying to manipulate her or expect certain things out of her if we can apply this even more radically to the world then anger starts to transform I can experience this I never showed you a close-up I guess I don't need to I can experience this and just be there with it if I have a very negative stressful situation coming in at me somebody was attempting to attack me or loved one getting very very sick if I'm resistant to that it's gonna escalate right the resistance to the sick person they start to feel like oh they've got to take care of me and it's causing them more stress which is making their illness worse or if I can just be their present loving aware if someone's attacking me and I get into fear or anger or resistance it's probably gonna turn into a fight if someone comes towards me and attacks me and I can switch that around with words good laughter with humor often it won't develop into a fight the essential thing to understand here is that anger needs resistance and resistance as the Vogons would say is futile when we resist things we tend to create the problems that we're trying to resist at least this is what I've experienced in my own life right there with the example of the beat if I can be radically vulnerable then I can be aware of the situation I can take and I can see the situation clearly and I can deal with the situation more effectively there's a form of meditation that I use to help me or help students along this path towards radical acceptance and let's use the example of you're married and you're going home and you're hoping that your wife or husband let's cook dinner you realize you've got that expectation in your head right we have to start realizing when expectation is working for most of us it's gonna be working pretty full time so I notice up really hoping that they have a dinner waiting for me then you can stop and you can do this fun meditation and close your eyes and imagine that you come home not only have they not made dinner but they have totally left this huge mess for you to clean up and they crash the car and they maxed out your credit card and everything you can imagine okay just come up with all these just terrible things that starts to condition our mind to humor because it can get ridiculous and and then when you come home and dinner isn't made you can see it with humor but when you laugh at that and you can just greet them and say hey could I cook a dinner tonight would you want to cook a dinner together that situation that could have been really negative turns into something really positive and paradoxically your wife or husbands probably gonna think a little bit just be inspired by your love and your generosity they're probably more likely to make dinner next time step one

see if inside of you you believe that anger is inevitable or useful if you're stuck in that belief I'd urge you to question it a little bit so that you can move on to step two step two is to understand that anger it needs the soil of expectation in order to grow step 3 begin to recognize expectation in yourself see when it's working and notice

you know there's my expectation I applied that expectation to somebody they didn't meet it I became frustrated they became frustrated just notice how it works then try that that visualization that meditation technique of taking your expectations and and imagine them not met so strongly that it becomes humorous to you because there's a real magic in humor if we can turn humor to our expectations it's very very difficult for it to grow into anger a final word we can we can think of anger like a road that we travel down and as we're traveling down that road the further down we get that further down the road we get more difficult it is to get off that road it's like we pick up speed the further we go so there's a real power in learning to recognize earlier earlier down the road that we're moving into anger a lot of times when we start this practice we're not going to notice until we're ten miles down the road and we're going at full speed and it's okay it's okay to notice it wherever you notice it if you can stop and notice it even say to yourself wow look I'm angry and don't think about the circumstances I'm angry because Rebecca didn't cook dinner for me recognize and look and say I'm angry because I had an expectation that Rebecca we cooked dinner for me and that expectation wasn't that in other words I'm taking the I'm seeing the source of it no longer as other people as the world around me but I'm seeing it the source as me in my expectations so I see ah ten miles down the road and look it was because I had this expectation and this expectation in this expectation and if you stop and you look back like that and you can try to put a smile on your face even you might start to get humorous about it because it almost is like this funny little game the expectation you know it's not gonna be met all the time and then whoom I'm in anger again yeah oh my gosh there's that little game that anger is playing and it plays it over and over and over you know what I'm not sure if I want to play that game anymore so I noticed it at ten miles down the road and then next time you do it you notice it you know you're likely to notice it at nine miles just so be going pretty much at full speed but you've still made progress every time you notice it notice then it came out of your own expectations you're gonna back up on that road might just be a tenth of a mile it might just be a few inches but every time it's gonna be a little bit more and if you keep up this practice eventually you're gonna see it before you even start on the road you're gonna be calming towards the road and you're gonna notice oh I'm forming an expectation and I know how expectations work this is probably gonna leave me into anger and then you can question that expectation try that meditation see if you can turn it into humor and then you won't even be able to enter first step down that road that is the key to transforming anger so completely that you can experience almost anything in life and you can meet it with awareness

instead of reaction when that happens it's a really cool way to live it's joyful it feels good it inspires people around you and your life unfolds in a more positive fashion because we all know what happens when we apply anger other people feed on it like my five-year-old daughter says it spreads like a sickness and pretty soon everybody's angry and the evening is shot that does not have to be the way it is

anger is transformable and you can do it I know that this might be a contentious or emotional issue for a lot of people so I'd love to hear from you and I'd love for people to share with each other down in the comments your experiences with anger ways that you have found transform it or even manage it and if you decide to try this practice that I'm talking about then let us know how it works for you and if over time you find yourself backing up down that road closer and closer to the origin of anger and incidentally again this will work with any negative emotion thank you for you cultivate

this vulnerability this way of not resisting the world the more it will become extremely difficult to feel frustration to feel stress anger any of these resistance based emotions thank you for watching see you soon