10 Steps For Dealing With AngerSample

Step 7 — Redirect Your Energy

Anger produces energy that can be redirected to countless good behaviors. Use your anger to do something useful and productive.

• Wash and wax your car. If you’re still angry after that, clean the interior.


• Clean out a closet, the attic, the cupboards, or any other area of your home.


• Weed your flower beds or till the soil in your vegetable garden. Don’t have either? Plant one. It’s amazing what planting something and watching it grow can do to calm you.


• Go to the driving range and hit a large bucket of golf balls. 

There’s something therapeutic and beneficial about engaging in physical activity. It helps you blow off steam. And when you re-channel that negative energy in the right direction, it can prove to be profitable. Just think of all you can accomplish. So get rid of it! Replace your anger with physical activity.

I do not, however, recommend operating heavy machinery or power tools as a way to redirect anger. Careless mistakes occur far more often when a person is angry. The same goes for driving any kind of vehicle. Don’t let your car or motorcycle serve as an outlet for your anger.

What about walking, running, swimming, hiking, or riding a bicycle? These activities are good for the body, but they do not require your complete attention. You can still stew in anger as you engage in exercises such as these.

What about doing a puzzle or reading a book? These are good for focusing the mind, but they are not activities that release pent-up physical energy. Choose an activity that engages both the mind and body in a healthful and productive way.

Intense anger has an element of confusion to it. In most cases, it is a free-floating emotion looking for a place to land. As a result, people who are angry often want to pound something with their fist or find an object to pick up and throw. Give your anger a positive focus. Expend that negative energy in a way that is productive ... not destructive.