To Manage Anger You Have to Get Angry First

Our Powerful Word for March is Anger Management.  This is the perfect lesson to follow Self-Control because, as I wrote before, expressing anger usually leads to regret.

Anger is a hot topic, it’s about fiery, heated emotions with the energy to drive us to unthinking acts.  Whenever someone does something regrettable out of anger, others who are in a calm state easily criticize the person, accompanied by, “I would never do that.”

This difference between how we think while calm vs. who someone thinks while angry or emotionally charged is called The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap.  We just can’t relate.

The most apt term for being a slave to anger is, author of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman’s term, “emotional hijacking,” whenever emotions trump reason.

Trying to teach anger management while in a cold emotional state is bound to fail due to anger’s hijacking power.  It’s like learning to swim without every getting in the water.

To successfully practice controlling anger requires you to be in a hot emotional state, to actually be angry first.
The lessons we teach our students at SMAA are embodied, they are not just platitudes; they are taught linking the mind and body.

One Powerful Lesson students are learning this month involves teachers and assistant teacher to repeatedly push them, eliciting anger and the very real urge to strike back.

Now, in a hot state, students learn to be aware of their own anger, to breathe, calm down, decide and act non-violently.

Of course, this is all done with full explanations of the drill and its purpose, before, during and after the drill so student understand no part of the drill is actual malice.

So when your child tells you his teachers were pushing him around and making him angry this month…we are, with the expressed purpose of managing and dissolving anger non-violently.

Anger is a natural, at times beneficial human emotion that helps us recognize and respond to threats.  What we do with this emotional information is up to us.

This month we are teaching our students to manage their anger for the better.

It’s a fascinating, imperative lesson I’m happy to teach.

A Salute to Self-Control

Given Self-Control is our Powerful Word of the Month, I’d like to share with you a Powerful Strategy to control anger.

Anger usually manifests in violence, in word or deed, as the quickest way to overcome a perceived threat. Violence is the default problem-solving strategy children use until they are taught more pro-social solutions to problems and conflicts.

Physically, you can tell when someone is ready to lash out in anger when you see their fists clench.  If you are in a heated conversation with someone and you see their fists clench, don’t be surprised to soon see those fists flying toward your face.

Anger, of course, breeds regret; we hurt others when we would not have, had cooler heads prevailed.

Anger thrusts us into quick, thoughtless action, the simplest action being to make a fist and hit.

Mental Strategies like “Stop and Think,” are beneficial, yet sometimes Physical Strategies are even more effective.

Fortunately,The Kenpo Salute our students learn provides a powerful strategy to align with this impulse to lash out and literally, put a lid on it.

You see The Salute in every class, the hand covering the fist.  The Salute represents the Warrior (the body) and the Scholar (the mind). We remind students to “cover our weapon” as a reminder that our minds should control our bodies (the hand covering the fist).

When a student wants to lash out, the simple solution to control this behavior is to align with the motion of punching.  Instead of punching someone else, the student simply redirects this tendency and punches his fist into his hand, making The Salute.

It’s as if he catches his anger in his own hand before he hurts someone.  This gesture prevents a student from lashing out because he cannot simultaneously hit another person and punch himself in the palm.

Now, after making The Salute, the student can take a breath and remind himself he is covering his weapon.  When the angry outburst is controlled, this allows the student time to think and use other mental strategies to resolve conflict peacefully.

Anger is an emotional hijacking that produces rash actions, actions we’d rather not take, actions we’d take back if we could.

Simple physical strategies, like making The Salute, can eliminate the pain of regret.

Have you ever regretted this?

Yesterday we had some friends over for brunch and I got into a fascinating conversation.

Three of us somehow got onto the topic of our exercise regimes, and specifically what each of us does to stay on track and talk ourselves into working out when we don’t want to.

Sarah, who, years later, still uses the WarriorFit workout I invented, mentioned a time when her boss intruded on her tight workout schedule.

As he (or was it she?) prattled on about something fairly unimportant, she was getting more and more anxious about her exercise window closing.

All three of us have these “dedicated, scheduled times” we adhere to that create powerful HABITS that we don’t have to think about.

That’s one Master Key to perseverance.

Paul’s little story was another.

One of the strategies I frequently use to motivate myself is imagining how I will feel when I am finished working out — I always feel great.

Thinking of the end result gets me through the rough spots and periods of low-motivation.

Paul was at the rec center and overheard a conversation between two elderly men.

One said, “I tell myself, ‘I’ve never regretted a workout.’”

I thought this was brilliant, simply brilliant. A prime motivator for all of us is the question, “will it be worth it?”

This gentleman gives himself the pat (and true) answer that obviously has worked well into his advanced age.

Add that question to your repertoire.

People who persevere are no different from those who don’t; there is no magic willpower gene that makes us continue when we don’t feel like it.

The ONLY difference is that people who persevere learn and apply specific techniques every day to build habits of thought and action that keep them on the path of success. Often times a Lack of Will is just a Lack of Skill.

Think about that the next time you think you or your child doesn’t have what it takes to persevere.

Success leaves clues…

Happy (Re)New Year!

Happy 2013!

Ah, the New Year. This is the time when we are supposed to clear out the old and usher in the new, to wipe the slate clean and start all over. Or so they say.

What kind of way to go through life is that?

I can’t imagine wiping my brain clean of all the knowledge and experience I worked hard for each year and thinking that starting from scratch every January is a good strategy.

It’s really daft when you think about it.

Last year, January 2012, I decided to buck the trend and not to focus on anything new. I’ve lived long enough and have had enough different experiences that I thought I’d rather take a look at things I started but didn’t finish, and other things I got pretty good at but not great, and get back to them.

This starting from scratch every year mindset is like building the foundation of a house. Then, instead of building the walls and roof, you go and build a new foundation each year. Looking back after a few years all you see are a bunch of empty foundations. Not one complete house.

I played the piano as a child. I took it up again as an adult. I stopped my lessons for 2 months to work on my book. I scheduled my return date, Jan. 10th, to resume my lessons.

What I DIDN’T do was decide to take up a different musical instrument and try to start from scratch just because it’s January.

Some people have a special closet, the one full of gear from 20 different activities that they gave up on all too soon, vainly giving in to NEW every year.

I wouldn’t forgive myself if I were a Yellow Belt in 10 different martial arts, or could only play Chopsticks on 10 different instruments because of the siren song of “novelty.”

Last year I published another book, Systema Revelations. The many articles that comprise the book were written years ago. Last year I decided, not to write something totally new, but to FINISH something I had mostly done. To RE-NEW my efforts. 2013 is, for me, a continuation of many projects that I must finish this year; I have a computer full of them.

In 2013, I recommend you take a look at what’s old and make it new again by renewing your commitment to finish or to take things to a higher level. You may just have to add the small, next step to your effort to achieve something extraordinary.

You may be eating healthy already, but drinking soda may be the last little tweak you need to make to drop those last few pounds. You don’t need some crazy overhaul resolution that won’t last more than 3 weeks anyway.

My point is to ride out the momentum you already have home and add to it to accelerate you growth.

This year RE-NEW for Success.

A Tribute to Zig Ziglar

I just heard on NPR today that the Zig Ziglar has died at the age of 86. If you don’t know who Zig Ziglar is, let me begin by telling you how I first heard of him.

I had just graduated from college and moved to Fort Meyers, Florida to continue my martial arts training. I was staying in the living room of a student I had met and have since become close friends with, and I had just begun teaching at Mr. Wedlake’s martial arts school. I was also working at a bike shop on Fort Myers Beach in the daytime, before classes started. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do professionally, but I did know that I wanted my own martial arts school. Working for my teacher gave me the vision that it was possible to teach martial arts full-time without being distracted by “a real job”.

While in Florida, my father thought he would help me out so he emailed me two cassette tapes and told me to listen to them. It was one of the best things he ever did for me, a young adult. One of these cassettes had the name Zig Ziglar on it with the word “goals” on the other side.  On my way to the martial arts school, I popped the cassette into the player of my Dodge Aries K, nicknamed Blue Thunder, and was immediately enthralled.

Up to this point, I’d never heard any type of motivational speaking outside of church or my dad’s other favorite speaker, Leo Buscaglia, on PBS. Leo spoke mainly about love while the Zig was talking to me about hopes, dreams and what I would make with my life. It was exactly what I needed at that point in time because these were the questions I sought to answer as I wrote in my journal sitting under a palm tree beside the pool in our apartment complex.

Zig gave me the idea to put up visual reminders of my goals everywhere through his “Jockey shorts” story.  He was looking at a magazine and saw a picture of a model wearing jockey shorts. He thought to himself that he wanted to look like the guy in the ad, and not like himself, so he ripped out the picture and put it up on his bathroom mirror.  That way he could look at the picture every morning for inspiration and to remind himself of the goal he was working toward. He even went so far as to put his weight in a new book he was publishing.  The catch was that the weight he wrote down in his book was about 46 pounds less than he currently weighed.   Because he made it public, it forced him to actually lose the weight before the book came out.   Long before scientists like Roy Baumeister studied willpower and came to the same conclusions, Zig was using such proven strategies to achieve his goals.

I went through Zig’s goal setting process for all parts of my life:

1. state  your goal
2. set a completion date
3. list the knowledge you will need
4. to list the groups you will work with
5. list the obstacles to your goal
6. list the steps you will have to take to achieve your goal, your plan of action
7. state why you want your goal, “what’s in it for me?”

One of my goals was to open a martial arts school, but I realized Florida was not the place, Colorado was what I wanted and chose to live.  As soon as I got my own room (when Ozzie realize I wasn’t going away we found a two-bedroom apartment in the complex and moved), I hunted down a map of the state of Colorado, bought a really ugly Colorado Rockies hat and put up posters of snowboarders and a No Fear poster of a rock climber on my bedroom walls.   I researched all I could about the state of Colorado, narrowing down my choice to Boulder County.   I sketched out what my school would look like and made a 3-D drawing of the interior, which I also put on my wall. I didn’t have a school or a business, but according to Zig what I needed and what I could have was a plan. I began spending my free time in the library and checked out every book I could on how to open my own business. I bought a giant three-ring binder, and without any help laid out every aspect of the martial arts school and how to run it I could. I created a massive business plan in my spare time. Oddly enough, when I presented this plan to David Macy he rented me the space for my first school on the strength of my business plan alone.

Zig was a phenomenal speaker who got his start as a door-to-door salesman selling cookware. He began motivating other salesman and eventually generalized his lessons to the rest of life. Zig is famous for his quote, “you can have everything you want if you help enough people get when they want.” As far as guiding principles go, this is one of the best because it begins with service to others instead of greed and selfishness. It  acknowledges that each of us has our own needs and desires, but the best way to fulfill them is to help other people first, to give before we receive. A bonus of following this advice is that research has shown that helping other people makes us happier than the actual goals we’re striving for. The real gold is in building strong relationships.