How Anger Makes Me Happy!

Everything in our lives is connected. The sun shines, and so flowers grow. The rain falls, and then trees can make leaves so the oxygen they produce can allow us to breathe. These connections are so seamless, we don't have to think about them in order for them to work. They just work. The same with anger and happiness. They are just two of the millions of connections all around us that can work together for our benefit regardless of our opinions about either one of them. Anger can be used for us to be happy in the same way as the sun shines so that flowers can grow. There is an exact formula that can be practiced in order to capitalize upon this reliable method. The results you will attain from it are absolutely guaranteed: you will be happier every time. All you have to do is read the remainder of this article, and while you are doing that, to the extent that you are willing to do it, give up judging for a few brief moments. After that, it's up to you to go out and practice this method. Here goes.
Anger. Who do you know who doesn't get angry? War, conflict, crime, and all other manner of manifestations of anger happen all the time. Arguments with a spouse or child, fights with a friend or coworker, the list goes on and on. If we let the stress of these situations motivate us, we can use them to be happy. This method is like taking the spin of a newscast and turning it around, only it's a thousand times more powerful than that. Because when we practice this method we are actually thanking ourselves for being angry in the first place, and we are also causing ourselves to be appreciative for the two things that our anger always teaches us. The first obvious lesson is that anger doesn't feel good, and so it teaches us how we don't want to feel. But the second step to this appreciation is to recognize the second thing anger also teaches us: anger teaches us how to be happy. n How does anger do this? Think about it. If you do something over and over again, what do you call that? No, not that term. The correct term would be to call that practice. And what does practice do? It makes perfect. So, if we have practiced anger over and over again, it's no wonder we are so good at it. But this practice, which up to this point has been totally automatic, can be given a new spin. Think of anger like a road. A nice, big, spacious, four-lane leading to same destination over and over again. Yet what if we could do something profound? Ripping up that road would take too much work, since in our brains the pathway we have used to be angry in neurological terms has been growing and strengthening for years. So what else can be done? How about instead, simply taking our end destination, the fragile shack of justifications and reasons we have built at the end of that four lane, and building something new there? We can do this! When we appreciate and thank our anger for paving that four-lane highway in the first place. Because without that familiar road, we would be getting nowhere here.
Okay, now you want the basics, the "How To" do this method so it actually works. That's easy. First of all, this is the "Tell the truth now, tell the truth later, method." All of my suggestions will be of this nature. Doing that will replace the "Fake it till you make it method" that never worked for anyone anyway. The truth here is, that when we get angry at something, regardless of what that something is, we may never like that thing. Okay, I stubbed my toe and I get angry at myself for doing that. There will never come a point when I am happy about stubbing my toe, and I don't care how happy I get. Now I may stub my toe less and less, the happier I get, but that's irrelevant. If I stub it, I get pissed off. Simple, direct, true. Yet is it necessary to focus my energy on the angry part of that process in order to heal my toe? In fact, doesn't your toe heal faster when you devote your energy to healing it, instead of being angry at it? Yes, that would be another truth. When we shift our energy away from being angry at being angry, then we will have more energy available to ourselves for being happy, and believe me, it's a proverb by now in medicine that happy feet heal faster. n So, you want a situation that is more relevant to what really makes you crazy? How about ex-wives. I know a bit about them, I happen to have three. What happens when the ex. comes over to pick up the kids and questions what I'm feeding them as if I would do a single solitary thing in this Universe to in any way do anything but nurture and support them? I get crazy. I get angry. I can't stand it. I also get happy. How? First, by thanking my anger for showing me all the feelings I don't want to be left with when she leaves. Feelings by the way, that have no effect on her whatsoever after she's gone. Those angry feelings only make my life miserable. But that's the good news. If I'm left with them, I can deal with them. Secondly, I thank those feelings of anger for paving a huge path to a place that I now have inside of myself that ends up not with more anger, but with more happiness. I happen to like more happiness more tha
I like more anger. How does this happen? By the simple practice of thanking myself for getting angry in the first place. By practicing this method of generating appreciation for the tried and true method of getting angry, my reactive "end destination" becomes something other than more anger. Now don't get me wrong here, those things that piss me off I will never like. This isn't about trying to put a silver lining on a black cloud. Black clouds will always be black clouds, but I don't have to stand under them all the time waiting for the rain. I can move. I can head for a dry shelter instead of standing out in the rain, cursing the fact that I'm getting wet. That shelter is appreciation. And you can build it right at the end of that angry road. n One of the fastest ways to build that shelter is to actually say the words out loud "Thank you, anger! For being there, and for teaching me such great things!" Go ahead, right now, actually practice doing that. Don't worry, there's some anger left inside of you from something. This is a literal process. It's easy, simple, and direct. That means it works. Simple things are like water; we can drink in small amounts of them safely, and that fools us into believing that they have no power. Yet get enough water together to cause a flood, and watch out! Continually thanking our anger is like building up a high mountain lake of feelings that will eventually cascade down into our lives, washing away all those facades of reasons and justifications that we spent so much time and energy building at the end of our anger road. That new shelter will feel better than the old one, and it will free up our energy for doing a whole lot of incredible new things. Like being happy!
The great thing about this whole process is that since you are the one generating your angry feelings, whether by choice, consciously, unconsciously, or whether "because of" something from the past, it simply doesn't matter. Only appreciating them does. Because for whatever reason you are giving outside of yourself for the cause of your feelings when you get angry, the truth is they are left inside of only you regardless of what you say their source is. So if they are inside of you, you then have control over them! Who else would? Not the ex., I can tell you that! I may have reacted to her with anger, but she isn't the one who obsesses and seethes after she leaves, I am. And I am doing that, when I do that. But now, I have a new place to go with that anger. That place is now connected to my happiness, like the sun and flowers, with a bond so strong that when I appreciate myself for the two gifts my anger gives to me, it's like adding sunshine to my growth. And what grows out of that? The gorgeous blooms of little more happiness tha
I had before I learned how to practice this process. And to tell the truth, that is something that I do like! n