You may not know that anger has profound PURPOSE. Discerning why anger is there, where it originates, and the effect it may have on your physiology if you do not harness what it has to teach you and hold onto it.
We all live by a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most to least important to us. Your hierarchy of values is unique and fingerprint-specific to you, whatever is on the top of your values list is what you’re inspired to fulfill most.
Your ontological identity revolves around it; your primary objective, mission or purpose in life revolves around it; and your epistemological pursuit, what you want to learn and what you want to become greatest at, revolves around it. As you go down the hierarchy of values, which are like the rungs on a ladder, your values tend to be more extrinsic in that you likely need outside motivation to get them done.
When you expect yourself to live outside the highest values of your hierarchy of values or set of priorities that you live by, you’re likely to defeat yourself. When you expect yourself to live outside what you value most, you’re most likely to end up being angry at yourself.
The same applies when it comes to other people. Any human being that you interact with, your spouse, children, colleagues, friends, etc., when you expect them to live outside their unique set of highest values, they’re likely to let you down. As such, they’re not really betraying you – you’re betraying you because you’re expecting them to do something they’re not highly likely to do.
Here’s why. Each time an individual perceives, decides, and acts, it’s based on what they value most. And every decision they make is based on what they believe will give them the greatest advantage over disadvantage at any moment.
So, anytime you expect a human being to live outside what they value most, you’re likely to be let down and feel frustrated because they’re not doing what you expect them to do.
They’re not wrong for being who they are, but you may be unwise expecting them to be something they’re not likely to do based on their hierarchy of values. Because their identity revolves around their highest values and that’s who they intrinsically are, they will make decisions that align with their own values – not yours.
When you expect another human being to live in your values or live outside their values, you’re likely to experience the ABCDEFGHIs of negativity.
In other words, you’ll tend to experience feelings of anger and aggression, feel betrayed and want to blame them, criticize them, and challenge them back. You may feel depressed and despaired, want to exit, and escape, feel frustrated and futile, grouchy, and grieving, hate them, and hurt them, and be irritable and irrational around them – all because you’re expecting them to live outside what they value most.
Also, no human being is one-sided in life. If you expect someone to be a one-sided individual – nice never mean; kind never cruel; positive never negative; peaceful never wrathful; giving never taking; again, you’re setting yourself up for unrealistic expectations.
Anger is due to unmet expectation. So, if your expectations are unrealistic, you’re most likely to be angry because others aren’t meeting those unrealistic expectations.
Anytime you expect others to be one-sided or expect yourself to be one-sided, you’re likely to be angry at them or angry at yourself.
Anytime you expect others to live outside their values or live in your values, you’ll tend to get angry because of those unrealistic expectations that can’t be met.
Your anger towards others or you are valuable feedback to let you know that you have unrealistic expectations.
Blaming somebody for not living up to your unrealistic expectations is delusional. The only thing you can reasonably expect a human being to do is to live according to their own values.
When you get angry, you also create physiological feedback.
Your anger over your unmet expectations activates your sympathetic nervous system that results in a fight-or-flight response.
You’ll tend to get angry, want to fight with them or avoid them, challenge them, and criticize them etc. Your blood sugar likely increases, your muscles get tense and tight, your digestive system shuts down, your testosterone goes up, you get more aggressive, and so on.
In other words, your physiology provides valuable feedback in the form of symptoms to let you know you have an unrealistic expectation.
I believe that anger is your friend, and not necessarily a “bad” thing. I’m amazed at how people have labeled certain behaviors as “good” and others as “bad.” I believe that thinking to be antiquated.
Every behavior that you have serves some purpose, so when you’re experiencing the ABCDEFGHIs of negativity mentioned above, that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it’s feedback to let you know that you have unrealistic expectations.
Your anger is under your governance.
It’s not what happens to you out there but what you perceive and expect. If you expect something that’s not realistic, you’re likely to be angry.
As such, I don’t go by what people say but instead by their values.
Every decision you make in life is based on what you believe will give you the greatest advantage over disadvantage at any moment in time.
Anytime you expect somebody to do something that they say they’re going to do, just know that anything that crops up that is much higher on their values in that moment, they’re likely to go and do it. If you understand that, and only expect them to live in their values and not always by what they say, you’re less likely to feel angry and let down.
And, while most people have every intention of living up to their word, they may have unexpected situations or greater opportunities that arise that are different – between the time they stated they would do something and when that time came.
It may also be wise to introspect and reflect for a moment on where and when you have done the same change of plans on someone else to see your three fingers pointing back at you in case you may be pointing one at them. Projecting moral ideals onto people will backfire. Once you own the responsibility for that, you’re less likely to have to have a physiological fight or flight response and create illness, chronic anger, and resentment.
When you do, you’ll tend to appreciate and love people for who they are, and not who you perceive they are “supposed” to be. In the process of doing it, you’ll tend to have less anger and fewer physiological health problems.