1) breathe.

Focus on your breathing until the initial wave of anger has passed. It may help to focus on counting the breaths.

Allow your breathing to deepen and slow.

2) label.

Say you yourself, “I feel angry.” Labeling the emotion brings your thoughtful brain back online.

This helps move beyond the Fight or Flight reaction of the reptilian brain

3) acknowledge.

Recognize the steps that brought you into this situation. What part did you play in the buildup to this anger?

Taking responsibility for your part helps point to small changes that you can take to avoid anger next time.

4) plan.

After acknowledging your part in the situation, notice where you can make different choices next time.

Visualize yourself making different choices to help increase the chance of remembering when necessary.

- - - - optional - - - -

5) apologize.

Depending on the situation, it may serve you to apologize. Taking responsibility for your part in the situation can help restore your relationship with the other party.

My TV says if I buy this or that toothpaste / car / ______ then I will be happy. What TV doesn’t tell me is that happiness is temporary. Instead of buying my way into temporary happiness, I can sit my way into lasting happiness.

Sitting allows me to reset my brain to my center, my spirit, my essence. This is where permanent happiness resides. In this moment, sitting in what I call the Ever Present Present, I can just be, happily.

Sticking with the basics, we have joy and fear.

Joy

is how I feel when I have what I want, or I don’t want what I don’t have. I am aligned with what is, and have no need or desire to change it.

Fear

is the emotion which says I don’t have enough information. This is usually about an unknown future. I come to a proverbial fork in the road and could simply choose arbitrarily, but if there is a part of me that wants to choose the “right” option, I may feel fear about choosing the “wrong” option. This could paralyze me until I cannot choose without more information about what each option entails.

Next, we have sadness.

Sadness

is how I feel when I recognize I have lost(*) something. I had it, and now I don’t have it. I feel sad. The message here is simply to acknowledge the experience of having, whether it was an object, a pet, or a fellow human. This is what funerals are for: to acknowledge that the person who was with us is no longer here (in the physical sense). We take the chance to experience the loss in its fullness, allowing acknowledgement of the new situation so we can move on.

Anger

Anger is a slightly different emotion. There are a few different emotions that we lump together under one label. Generally speaking, anger is an emotion that comes up when boundaries have been crossed. So-called righteous anger could be when personal space or personal property has been encroached or taken.

In general, if emotions are held in the body, they can cause problems, so it’s best to express emotions as soon as possible so our emotional bodies run smoothly.

(*) Loss is something of a false belief in that I never had it in the first place, but this line of inquiry goes beyond the basics outlined here.