To Manage Anger You Have to Get Angry First

March 6, 2013 by bradscornavacco
Filed under LifeSkills, Powerful Word, Success

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.

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A Salute to Self-Control

February 27, 2013 by bradscornavacco
Filed under LifeSkills, Philosophy, Powerful Word, Uncategorized

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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.

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