Anger - the sign of standing up for myself

Your feelings are trying to tell you something very important you need to know about yourself.

You feel uncomfortable, but you don't know exactly how you feel; good or bad, you have an objective point of view. You try to understand other people's points of view. Your friend didn't mean to be rude. He just had a bad day yesterday. You try to explain his attitude to you, but it's difficult. The harder you try, the more frustrated and even sad you feel.

What's wrong with you? Is it wrong to be angry with someone or a situation? Should you be understanding of his situation and just put it all behind you?

NO WAY. He is he. YOU ARE YOU. 

Maybe he was just frustrated with himself. But, his attitude still made you angry and sad. Don't ignore your feelings. Just acknowledge what you are feeling. You are just feeling it. Do not judge whether your feeling is relevant because there is no right or wrong way to feel.

In my life, my anger has been greatly ignored.

I have rarely faced conflicts. I have consciously or unconsciously avoided them. Even when I felt uncomfortable in some situations, I usually didn't speak up because I couldn't immediately identify what made me uncomfortable and what I should say to whom. Usually, after sleeping on it, I'd see clearly what made me frustrated and angry, but it's too late to express it to the person who might be concerned.

I wasn't particularly afraid of fighting with other people, but my love for peace and harmony with others was very strong, so that I intellectually found the reason to calm myself.

For most of my life I wasn't very good at getting in touch with my 'negative' feelings, especially anger. As I was quite good at expressing  positive feelings, people might have thought I was an honest person. In reality, I was not really honest because I always had a strange frustration against some people and situations without clarity.

Anger is our life force and assertiveness

In the last decade, however, I began to seriously take the problem of ignoring my anger because I realised that anger is the sign of "I am" and "I stand up for myself".

Anger is our life force, our assertiveness and our standing on our own ground. When anger arises, our primal energy is telling us "Our core power is being threatened, we need to do something for ourselves!"

Because anger is considered 'negative' or 'uncultured' in society, we tend to suppress it. Anger itself is not bad. As anger is fire and energy, we need it to live and it fuels us to move forward! Rather, how we deal with anger in everyday life needs to be more learned and trained.

I have also learnt that if I ignore my anger, I will never gain my true self-confidence because I will never really stand up for myself and trust myself. Anger rises FOR me, so it does not matter if my argument or attitude is based on my subjective perspective. I need to express my frustration to other people in some way, even if it makes me and others feel uncomfortable. I must always stand on my side with all my competence and ability at the moment.

Image - Words by Tony Robbins