MM149 - Anger is Not a Strategy | MM Book Study Pt. 7

Anger is not a sin. Anger is a natural human emotion. However, anger in and of itself is not a strategy. When you attempt to use anger as our strategy, we set ourselves up for failure.

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to Morning Mindset podcast, and today we are going to continue on with the Morning Mindset book study, and the topic for today is Anger is Not a Strategy. Yes indeed, anger is not a strategy. Now I started using this phrase a few years ago. The phrase anger is not a strategy, after I had a phone conversation with a good friend, and this good friend had been well, he'd been screwed over by a business associate.

-

He felt he had been done wrong by a business associate, by a business partner, and he explained to me the circumstances, and I having listened to it said yeah, you probably are correct. You have been wronged by this person, and my friend was naturally angry over the situation he was upset about it, and he's like “I am going to make sure that I get that SOB. I'm going to get that son of a bitch”, forgive my French there, “-and I'm going to I'm going to do everything I can to shove it in his face”, right? He was in that was his plan.

-

He was angry over the situation and his strategy for the future because he was taking his part of the business, you know, they he was taking his own part of the business and moving on on his own, the partner who he felt had done him wrong and he was going to show him right he was going to bury the other guy and I listened to my friend, because he is my friend and I try to be a good sounding board.

-

We talked and after we hung up I thought about it for a little while and I just sent him a text. I sent him a text anger is not a strategy and here Omega. He's like, okay, you're right. I get it. I get it. Now anger is not a sin either. There are some people in the in the world that will try and convince you that if you get angry that that in and of itself is wrong that it's a sin you know that you shouldn't get angry with people and anger does you no good. People will say, “Oh, it doesn't do any good to get angry. Does you no good to get angry.”

-

That's bullcrap. Okay, that's bologna sausage, and it's actually counter of well, it's countering general human nature anger, is a natural human emotion. It is not a sin, it's not something that you should avoid. But it's also not a strategy anger is a natural human emotion or reaction to whatever. Okay, for instance, if someone were to cut you off in traffic and you have to drive up off of the road, and you run into a stationary object, right you're going to do a tree or a pole or a mailbox or whatever.

-

Do they even have mail boxes anymore? I don't know, and that happens you're in a car crash, because of the arrogance and negligence of another person. Would you be righteously angry? Yes, of course you would. You would naturally be angry. That is a natural human emotion anyone who would tell you? Well, there's no point in getting angry, just because someone ran you off the road and you crash your car into a tree, that person is an imbecile.

-

You know what? There's nothing you can do about it, so there’s no point in being angry. No, anger is a motivator, alright? Anger should motivate you. If you were out in public and someone attacks your family or threatens your family, you should be angry immediately that someone is threatening your family. Now, just being angry isn't going to solve the problem.

-

Like I'm angry, I'm angry, angry-angry-angry. No, anger should be a motivator. Think of anger as a natural human emotion. That is a motivator that motivates you to do something else, something productive, to solve a problem. So in the situation my friend here that was talking about, yes. He had been screwed over by a business partner.

-

He'd been done wrong. Right and he was angry about it, but the strategy wasn't just to stay angry. The strategy was to figure out how to be more successful in his own business how to take his part of the business and be successful. You may have been angry in the past, you may be angry now, but you can't hold on to it. Think about it like that anger is not a sin, it's not wrong. It's a natural human emotion, it's a reaction to circumstance, but it's not a strategy. It's not an overall game plan. You know, if you played football, when you're a coach or- I'm sorry when you were a kid a teenager, whatever in high school, you played football and your coach would come in and let's say you had a lousy first half and you were losing, the team was losing, and he would come in there and he was angry, right?

-

He kicked the water bucket over and he would you know, slam his hand into a locker to get your attention and stuff and he would he would break you and he was angry and so forth, but that wasn't the game plan. The game plan wasn't just the coach being angry, then he would say “Alright, we're going to go out here, and we're going to do this. We're going to do this and we're going to do this. I'm going to shift you from here to here. We're going to put in this guy instead of this guy. We're going to do all these different things and then we're going to attempt to win this game.”

-

He's trying to motivate you, but his motivation is not just being angry, right? So when it comes to human relations, to relations in your job, you're with your family or what have you, anger is not a sin and don't teach people that anger is a sin and that if they're angry that they're wrong, because that's not the case at all.

-

Anger is a natural human emotion, it is. But anger is also supposed to be a motivator. It is supposed to motivate you to put in some time, to put together a plan to do something else. Just being angry isn't going to help you win the game, just being angry isn't going to help you achieve the success or complete the mission you have to do something else.

-

So that is, I think that's about it. I'll give you one, personal one. When someone tells me that I can't do something, if someone underestimates me or tells me that I can't or says that they don't think I can or I don't have the ability or the skill or what have you, generally that annoys me, and that is my motivator to achieve that goal to prove that person wrong.

-

I've actually done that over the years, many many times. Someone has told me that, so I'm going to said that they didn't think I could do it. They didn't think I had the skill, the intelligence, the motivation, whatever to do that thing and kind of irked me. That irks me when someone tells me I can't and so I said about to prove them wrong now in order to be successful.

-

I can't just say “ Oh well, I'm mad, I’m annoyed, so that's going to help me be successful.” I have to find a better way. I have to do it better. I have to work harder, you know, one of the things that anger should do is it should motivate you to work even harder to be even more diligent to show that person.

-

Oh, no, I'm not going to quit. I'm not done, you haven't seen the last of me yet? So I'll leave you with that, Anger is Not a Strategy. It's a natural human emotion, and you should use your anger as a motivator. You should use it to motivate you to succeed and to fix the problem not to just stand around being angry all the time. Alright, I'm your host Paul Markel. This has been Morning Mindset podcast. Thank you very much for joining me, and I will talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.