7 . Steps to Turn Anger and Frustration into
Peak Performance
STEP ONE:
BANISH THE ANGER MYTH
What did you learn about anger when you were growing up? Well, depending on the
culture, religion and circumstances of your upbringing, your answers to that question
will vary. You may have grown up in a culture where discussions were often hot and
loud even if people weren’t actually angry, where temperament was high and
emotional explosions were a form of sport. If so, you may look at anger differently
than people who were brought up in Anglo-Saxon countries with a low tolerance for
emotional outbursts. Whatever your background, I’ll get you to reflect for a moment
on how anger was perceived in your immediate environment - in your home, by your
family, friends and teachers.
Were you encouraged to show anger? Was anger accepted in your home and
handled effectively? Or was it a ‘no go’ area which was pushed away or even
punished? Whatever your memories and reflections, a huge number of people have
grown up in households where the myth that ‘anger is bad’ prevailed.
Many of my friends were punished as children if they showed anger, and any sort of
angry outburst was strongly discouraged. This still holds true in many families today.
If your parents never learned to deal with their own anger, it’s unlikely that they
passed on good anger-management models to you. The trouble is, though, that if you
learned that anger was bad, if you haven’t learned to address your anger and work
with it, it can undermine your life. The result is miserable, guilty, angry people. After
all, if you’ve been told that anger is evil, what do you do when you get angry? How do
you feel?
So, step one of our journey towards opening doors to peak performance is to dispel
that anger myth right now. Anger in itself is not bad. But what is it really? Well, let’s
move on to Step 2 because it's time now to embrace the real truth about anger.
STEP TWO:
EMBRACE THE ASTOUNDING TRUTH
ABOUT ANGER
Are you ready to learn the empowering truth about anger? Here it is:
Anger is nothing more or less than a powerful human emotion which arises when we
feel ‘threatened’ by some circumstance or event. When that sense of threat appears,
anger emerges to protect us. To protect us! Did you learn that as a child? Did your
parents clap with delight when you showed anger, and say: ‘Way to go, Johnny. Let
that anger out. You’re going to need it to grow up strong and happy.’? If so, you
experienced a highly unusual response to your anger.
Anger is there to protect us. The world can be a tough, hostile place, and people do
not always treat each other well. Take away anger, and all we have in the face of
threat is fear, which is unlikely to help us deal with life’s threats successfully. So rather than anger being a negative, it’s a positive. It only turns bad if we let it out
at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong way, or not at all. Then, though,
beware. Badly managed anger is just one little letter away from Danger.
Over the past two decades, I’ve learned that anger can be channelled into high
productivity. It is a huge source of energy, and that energy can be used
constructively. The decision is yours. If you’re someone who explodes easily, do you
plan to continue that way, and face the collateral damage afterwards? Or are you
someone who sits on anger until it threatens your health? Do you channel it into
something creatively covert like revenge? Or do you want to make friends with it and
use it to fuel peak performance?
In order to use the terrific power of anger to improve your performance and open
doors for yourself, you’ll need to embrace this truth about anger: anger can be your
most powerful ally! Embrace this truth and you’ll be ready to start opening doors.
STEP 3:
INVESTIGATE YOUR OWN ANGER HABITS
The way in which we deal with our anger defines how successfully we can move
forward in an anger circumstance.
For instance, for many years I held my anger back. Like lots of you, I had been
brought up in a family where displays of emotion in public or even at home were not
welcome. That meant, at least in my case, that for many years I learned to squash
anger, with disastrous results. On the other hand, a long-year boyfriend had been
brought up by a father who blew his top about the most trivial things. That boyfriend
modelled this, and found it quite OK to explode over little upsets, even in public. He
felt ‘free’ when he exploded, even if the rest of us cowered in the fallout. He did not
recognise that he had an anger problem. How well do you think we managed with
each other’s anger habits?
Exploding loudly is claimed to be the healthier alternative, at least for the person who
is angry. It is no fun for those in the line of fire, though, as I know from years of
experience. On the other hand, my anger squashing model was no good for me or
my health, either. It was no good for my relationships with other people. If anger is so
powerful and we squash it, we end up squashing other strong emotions as well, such
as joy. And we need anger to help us grow and heal.
A recent study from the University of Tennessee by Thomas, Bannister and Hall
looked at anger in relation to girls who had been abused in childhood. These
researchers found that anger played a crucial role in the recovery process of these
girls as they matured. In several cases, it played an empowering role and enabled
some of these women to protect themselves from further abuse. As I said earlier,
anger itself is not bad. Whether it turns good or bad all depends on what we do with it
and how we handle it.
So have a think about your own anger habits, and get ready for new options. There
are better ways to use your anger
STEP 4:
MODEL AN ANGER ANGEL
If you want to use your anger to drive peak performance, there’s no better place to
start than to model an anger angel - someone who uses (or used) anger to fuel
extraordinary accomplishments. As an example, I have chosen Florence Nightingale.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Florence before, I strongly recommend that
you Google her story as fast as you can. The 19th century produced many amazing
achievers, but I know of none finer than Florence.
This extraordinary woman was born into upper class British society in 1820 at a time
when wealthy young woman were expected to marry well and have children. But not
Florence. Believing that she had been ‘called’ to take a different pathway, she defied
the wishes of her parents by becoming a nurse at the age of 24. At that time, women
who were nurses had about the same status as prostitutes! To cut a 90-year life story
short, Florence then went off to the Crimean War in Turkey in 1854 with about thirty
other nurses who she had personally trained. She was responsible for all sorts of
improvements in the disastrous conditions in army hospitals.
When she returned to Great Britain, Florence laid the foundation of professional
nursing with the establishment of the first secular nursing school in the world in 1860.
She worked tirelessly on writing books and building the profession she championed,
even though she was bedridden for years at the end of her long life.
But here comes the most important part. Well into her eighties, Florence was asked
how she had found the energy to sustain her efforts during the Crimean War and her
subsequent life’s work. And she answered with just one word: rage. In other words,
she had used the energy of her anger at social injustice, incompetence, ignorance,
unnecessary suffering and all the other things she fought against to fuel her
extraordinary, lifelong contribution to nursing.
What will your anger help you to achieve? Are you ready to start turning your own
anger and frustration into peak performance? If so, let’s take the next step.
STEP 5:
MAKE YOUR IMPOSSIBLE DREAM LIST
Anger is a truly powerful emotion which is accompanied by a huge surge of energy.
Just think of the current which pulses through you when you are really, truly mad.
Often, we turn that energy destructively against ourselves and others. But what if we
could use it to fuel peak performance, to drive achievements we never dreamed were
possible for us? What then?
In order to harness the energy of anger and convert it into peak performance, you
first need to have a list of your personal and / or professional goals. When I say list, I
mean a hard-copy list of clear goals which you really want to achieve. And this list
must be easily accessible. It needs to be kept on your desk, on a pin board, in your
handbag or briefcase, somewhere close at hand.
If you don’t already have such a list, you need to make one before you can continue
with this process. A word of warning, though: for some people this won’t be easy.
When I first tried to make my list, I had no idea what my goals were, so making the
list was a depressing exercise. It was years ago when I was a semi-invalid as a result
of a serious accident. I couldn’t imagine a single goal, the future looked bleak.
Fortunately, I had a coach who pushed me, and spending a few hours forcing myself
to make the list was crucial to my recovery.
You will need quality time to make your list. And when you start making it, please
don’t limit your goals to any one specific area. Write down anything you want to have,
to do, to achieve. I remember that when I made my first list, I included my wish to
have a ginger cat. A few weeks after making the list, I had two cats, one of which was
ginger. More importantly, at a time well past the normal age of beginning a family, I
wrote down that I wanted children. Today I have 8 – but that’s another story!
So, make the list. Then you’ll be ready for Step 6.
STEP 6:
TURN YOUR ANGER ENERGY INTO PEAK
PERFORMANCE
The difference between performing your activities well and performing them at the
peak levels of your ability is not always a question of talent. Very often, it’s about
discipline, staying power, and sustaining the energy needed to see goals through to
the end. And there’s no better place to reap that energy than from your own anger.
In order to help you convert the energy of your anger into performance energy, I’m
going to use a model which is well known in psychology. It’s called the Stimulus –
Response model.
This model looks at the way we respond to stimuli in our lives, and the impact of how
we respond. This is relevant to us because anger is a result of ‘threatening’ stimuli in
our lives. Let’s say for now that the stimulus for you is a trusted employee cheating
your company; your teenage daughter coming home several hours past her curfew;
someone openly questioning your integrity with no justification, etc. The stimulus
makes you angry, and you respond immediately with your usual angry response:
yelling, sulking, physical violence, covert action, and so on. There’s a lot of energy in
those reactions, but it goes into destructive behaviour toward yourself and others.
But what if, instead of jumping into your usual angry response (and believe me, you
have a choice here), you wait a moment? What happens then? In that moment of
waiting, you can access your choice to do whatever you want with your anger.
Instead of blowing your top, choose your reaction. Take out your goal list and select
the one that’s most important to you right now. Use the energy that is cursing through
your body to take the next step towards fulfilling that goal. Please note that I didn’t
say “now fulfil the goal”. The goal may have many parts if it is a long-term goal. You
are just taking the next step with the help of your anger energy.
Let me give you an example. Some years ago, I embarked on a leadership project.
The goal of that project was to raise $100,000 to help with the building of a school in
northern Ethiopia. I decided to visit the school so that I would be able to talk about it
to potential donors. When I arrived, I had a strong emotional response to Ethiopia,
heavily laced with anger. I just couldn’t believe that it was possible for so many
people in my world to live so well, and for these wonderful people to have so
shockingly little. I could have broken down walls, I was so furious. So, in the little
hotel where my husband and I were staying, I got out my list, and added a new goal.
The new goal was to make a significant contribution to the end of poverty in Ethiopia.
And then I took the first step: I drew up the outline for a charity which would finance
sustainable projects which would permanently impact poverty in Ethiopia.
Of course, that was a big goal. It had many parts, and more parts have been added
as others have reached completion. It’s a life goal. But I can honestly say that many
of the more difficult steps have been fuelled by anger, used in the best possible way.
Using the stimulus-response model to interrupt your anger habit won’t take your
anger or its cause away. That’s good, because if someone or something threatens
you seriously, you may need your anger to protect yourself. But in many other
situations, you’ll be able to use the energy of your anger to take the next steps
towards peak performance in any activity you choose. And when you do this, you
achieve two things. Firstly, you distance yourself from the thing that has made you
angry. That distance gives you time to make sensible decisions about how to handle
the thing which triggered your anger. Secondly, instead of turning the energy of your
anger against yourself or others, you use it in an empowering way. You become the
winner, not the victim. You use anger to take the next step towards opening a door in
your own life. That energy is precious, so please don’t waste it. It can be used to
drive your most cherished dreams to fulfilmen
STEP 7:
DEFUSE ANGER IN OTHERS
I am so grateful for my experiences with anger and the knowledge I have gained
about its huge productive power. Not only has it helped me achieve more than I had
ever thought possible, it has also helped me deal with anger in others.
Two of my male colleagues have real anger issues. These issues have made them
both difficult people to be around, despite their many talents. You may have friends
or colleagues like these two gentlemen, and you may shun them because of their
uncontrolled anger. If they are part of your family, though, that might not be so easy.
Anger can be very scary, but I no longer fear anger in others unless I see it turning
into violent rage, and I’ve rarely experienced that. I have learned to use the anger
interrupting model outlined above to defuse other peoples’ anger as well, and you
can do this too.
Let’s say someone you know is seriously angry and you are in the line of fire even if
you are not the actual cause of their anger. By standing your ground, remaining calm,
and establishing that you are listening (but not necessarily impressed), you can help
to defuse the critical moment. It’s hard to stay angry if people around you remain
calm. By not reacting as that angry person may expect, you will help them interrupt
their own anger.
You’ll find that the more you work on turning your own anger into productive energy,
the more you’ll see anger for what it is: fuel. And when you view it that way, the better
you’ll become at defusing anger in others.
I mentioned earlier that I had once lived for several years as a semi-invalid following
a serious accident. During that time, I became deeply angry with my situation and the
hopelessness I felt after receiving depressing medical opinions. I knew that if I didn’t
find a way to defuse the anger growing inside me, it would destroy me.
So, I made my goal list. The top goal on that list was to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in
Tanzania, Africa. There was just one small problem. At the time I made that goal, I
couldn’t walk for more than an hour without serious pain through my back and legs.
To get to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro (5’895 metres), you have to be able to walk for
several hours a day at increasingly high altitudes with increasingly small amounts of
oxygen. And the final ascent is an all night climb of over 1000 metres altitude, and
then a 2’000 metre descent before your next resting place. Who was I kidding?
Well, here’s the truth: I used my anger to sustain a four-year training period to get
ready to make that trek. I used it to boost my determination when our guide told me
half way through the trip that I was too slow and probably wouldn’t make it to the top.
I used it to keep going through one of the toughest nights of my life, fighting fatigue
and altitude sickness as I neared the peak. When I reached the top, I understood the
power of anger and how it can be used to empower us to reach the peak.
You can use your anger to reach peak performance, too. And I can help you. Contact
me today to learn more about my peak performance training offers. Receive a 50%
discount and save $150 or more. Just open the door!
Dalam praktek Hipnoterapi seringkali Hipnoterapis menemui klien yang sulit memasuki kondisi hipnosa, setidaknya penilaian ini diperoleh setelah dilakukannya serangkaian test sugestivitas (Suggestibility Test) standar, misalkan : Arm Raising & Down, Eye Catalepsy, Rigid Catalepsy, dll. Kondisi ini terkadang membuat frustasi para Hipnoterapis pemula.