Anger: The Emotion Keeping You From Your Goals

(If you don’t like Star Wars quotes, you can leave Sir/Miss.)

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First off…

I’m not coming from a monk’s standpoint or a stoic one.

Though, I love both practices.

Second…

Anger is actually a fantastic emotion.

I’m not telling you not to feel. I’m actually talking about how to feel it.

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Believe it or not — this is mostly for the stereotypical self-suppressing man — anger is in the same circle as all emotions; a healthy one.

All of your emotions are necessary, and all of them deserve their time out in the open when it comes to how they can affect and transform your life.

What you need to watch out for the most and avoid, which I’ve done intimately myself, is to think that being emotionless is the key to logical progress. And even more mistakenly so, that the amplification of only a few emotions while suppressing the rest is nearly as bad as being emotionless.

Let’s talk, shall we?

I’ll lightly cover being emotionless, emotional dedication(allowing only a few), and why anger may be stopping you from your goals.

The emotionless separation

An emotionless man is a doomed one.

The reason?

You separate yourself from the human experience. Therefore, you also remove yourself from humans entirely. And to separate yourself from other humans means that you lose your ability for compassion, empathy, and understanding.

You become inhuman.

Thus, leaving connection out of your well-intended desire to create influence.

As alluring as it may be to leave your emotions to the side, even to keep your head clear, it’s not what you think it is. Most men think that setting emotions aside is a way to keep your compass straight and keep movement swift.

This is called compartmentalization. It’s useful and valid. It gives us the ability to keep our focus and truly dig into our craft.

This can work for a plethora of occupations.

Maybe you’re in construction where your focus keeps you from injury. Maybe you’re an architect or engineer where logic leads your work, not human connection. Maybe you work as an accountant or a programmer where numbers and data are all you need to be work dedicated.

Maybe even in artistic craft, you need a clear head that has only your practice in mind.

But let me ask you this…

Are you using your work to escape?

Do you overwork in order to avoid emotions that you can’t seem to overcome?

Are you compartmentalizing…or are you avoiding?

Your fear of being emotional and vulnerable to what you don’t understand and what you do not know is what makes us human.

It’s not about weakness, it’s about connection to the human experience.

Dedication to favorable emotions

Most men feel two things: happiness and anger.

Then again, they may only be the two things expressed.

Ladies, how many times have you been able to read the emotions of men? Through micro-expressions, through body language, and through energy? How often have you noticed these things and said nothing, or mentioned them and men have deflected?

Guys…most women have a pearl of biological wisdom that most of us men just don’t have.

You might as well get to know your other emotions. Maybe if you get to know your emotions well enough you could actually win one of your arguments with her.

But…probably not.

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What happens when we suppress all other emotions besides the ones that we want to feel and that we amplify them through only the ones that we allow?

How often have you been on the verge of tears when you’re angry?

How often have you been happy but expressed it as lust?

How often have you been trying to make connections with other people and come off as dull, creepy, or aggressive?

These are the types of things that happen when we don’t know our emotions clearly and separately. These are the things that happen when all of our feelings our pressed out through the bottle-necked amplification of anger and happiness.

The anger that keeps you from your Goals

Yeah, that’s a lot to get me to my main point. I just couldn’t leave out a beneficial second and third.

However, they’re there to help me support what I’m about to say.

What are your goals?

Do you really think that you can get there without connections to others? And do you think that those connections are void of emotions?

Surprise. They’re not.

It’s not about what anger does to you or how it makes you feel judged, it’s about how anger is expressed.

As I said, anger is a healthy emotion.

It’s a fantastic one actually when used correctly.

Robert Augustus Masters thoroughly talks about anger in his book To Be a Man and makes the most life-effective observation about it: anger(and our other emotions) are healthy when you they’re not intentionally directed toward another person to inflict pain.

I can’t recommend this author and his books enough.

(Disclosure: with the links provided, I may get affiliated commissions by your use of them.)

When we express ourselves honestly, we don’t have to direct blame at all. We just have to how we feel and how it’s affecting us.

The feelings that you get caused by the external world, intentional or not, are created by your own story and what you intend to do with them.

To make it as clear as possible, we can express ourselves as victims who you use blame or as warriors who take responsibility.

Example:

Your partner sadly expresses how hurt they are by your avoidance and your lack of commitment to the relationship.

You have two options.

You can either subconsciously seek the defense, reacting to them by finding their wrongs and why what they’re saying was first caused by them being annoying and ‘being needy’.

Or…

You can seek to understand why they expressed this in the first place. Instead of avoiding responsibility, seek out your own flaws. Look to find where they’re right.

So, what does this have to do with anger?

Anger is a highly volatile and impulsive emotion. It comes quickly and it rarely gives you time to think. It’s a defense mechanism for most, and it’s destructive…unless we’re in control of it.

The reason anger can stop you from your goals is that you’re using it to create walls, you’re not using it to connect.

Your anger is being used to push away, to cover up insecurities, and to diminish others and their own feelings.

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But it doesn’t have to be like that!

Anger is a huge motivator.

Anger is a tool in which we can become vulnerable when we’re too afraid to do otherwise.

Anger is the emotion that can crush timidity, give energy to your goals, and give you confidence in your intentions.

This is how anger works for me:

“I’m tired of being a people-pleaser and propping up everyone else instead of myself.”

“I’m disgusted by my conditioned response to buckle in the face of challenge. I’m going to stand strong no matter how afraid I am.”

“I’m over being the person that never gets what he wants. I’m going to risk debilitating relationships, pleasure, and security in order to stimulate growth and emotions and experience.”

The above may not mean much to you, but you get the idea.

Find and repeat your own.

Believe in them.

Bond yourself to them.

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If we only use anger as a protection mechanism, it only separates us from others and experiences.

But when we use it to our advantage and use it to become sick of our own mediocrity, it can bring us closer to people and progress.

Try this:

Use anger to get fed up with your situation.

Use anger to remove yourself from harmful relationships and environments.

Use anger on the inside to change how you see yourself.

Use anger intentionally in your expression to show how you feel and ask for help, not to push others away or remove yourself from responsibility.

We all have to understand and practice our emotions with balance and intentionality. We can use them all to guide us, connect us, and feel the world as it was meant to in the experiment of human life and direction.

Truth and Love reader.

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If you like my writing and the things I question, you might( I mean…probably) also like the questions and conversations on my podcast, The Rebel Minded Podcast. Find it with the link below on Substack, or on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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