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three things to do when you feel angry

  1. Name it. I feel angry.
  2. State your current judgment, the thing that you are thinking in the moment. That’s a stupid idea.
  3. Break down the situation; explore the underlying belief. What was going on when you started to feel this way? What were you believing about the situation? 

The three things are so straightforward that we often get sloppy in our execution of them. It’s easiest to collapse our feeling (#1) and our judgement (#2) together. But when we do this, we usually drop the most potent element (the named feeling) and say something like, “I feel like that’s a stupid idea” rather than, “I feel angry and think that’s a stupid idea.”  

We dilute our most salient emotions when we forget to distinguish our feelings from our judgements.  But when we take responsibility for the way that we feel, then we can use our feelings to initiate change.