Masthead

Letting Go:

“Mandela made a grand, elegant, dignified exit from prison and it was very, very powerful for the world to see. But as I watched him walking down that dusty road, I wondered whether he was thinking about the last 27 years, whether he was angry all over again.

Later, many years later, I had a chance to ask him. I said, ‘Come on, you were a great man, you invited your jailers to your inauguration, you put your pressures on the government. But tell me the truth. Weren’t you really angry all over again?’

And he said, ‘Yes, I was angry. And I was a little afraid. After all I’ve not been free in so long.

But,’ he said, ‘when I felt that anger well up inside of me I realised that if I hated them after I got outside that gate then they would still have me.’ And he smiled and said, ‘I wanted to be free so I let it go.’

It was an astonishing moment in my life. It changed me.”

Bill Clinton recalling a conversation with Nelson Mandela

Anger Management

Anger becomes the predominant feeling behaviourally, cognitively and physiologically when a person makes the conscious choice to take action to immediately stop a threatening behaviour of another outside force. The threat can be real or imagined, verbal or physical.

Anger is the emotion of not having our needs met.

To be angry is to suffer. It doesn't help anyone to get angry - all too often anger can become the primary way of expressing oneself. Anger hurts whoever is angry. Anger ruins relationships and careers, causes heartache and regret, and can devastate health and wellbeing.

Tiredness, stress, pain and hormonal imbalances can all contribute to the problem.

We all have triggers for our anger whether it is simply being ignored or someone contradicting our core beliefs. Understanding what they are and re-examining our thoughts around them can be among the first steps to managing anger.

All too often we 'learnt' anger in childhood - this may have been our parents constantly arguing, or growing up in a culture where we were not allowed to express anger. Perhaps being angry wasn't unacceptable and a sign or failure.

To overcome anger, we need to identify and reframe our limiting beliefs (why we become angry) by accessing our subconscious mind, using Hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT to help overcome these deep-rooted emotions and behaviours.

'The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong'

Wilson Mizner