The Upside of Getting Angry

When Facing a Difficult Life Decision, It’s Better to Act in Anger than Fear

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Everyone agrees we’re in a massive transition, but few agree on the best way to navigate it. Every Wednesday at The Nonlinear Life we focus on how to turn this period of uncertainty and stress into one of growth and renewal.

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If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that anger is bad, right?

Proverbs 16:32 says, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.” Marcus Aurelius agrees. “It isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining.” Even the Buddha concurs. “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.”

One of the few people to disagree in the ancient world was Aristotle: “The angry man is aiming at what he can attain, and the belief that you will attain your aim is pleasant.”

Well, it turns out, Aristotle may have been right.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we respond to difficult life circumstances in recent years because one of the most revealing questions I ask people in my life story interviews is which emotion they struggled most with during their time of change. Fear has always been the #1 answer, followed by sadness, shame, and guilt. Anger comes in a distant fourth, with less than half as many people citing it as comparable to fear.

"What is the biggest emotion you struggled with in your time of change?" from my book, Life Is in the Transitions

For a long time, that response encouraged me. Fear seems far more manageable than anger, and since fear is so common, it shouldn’t hamper our ability to make strong decisions. Most of the ancient sages would seem to agree, but most contemporary social scientists strongly disagree.

Both fear and anger have been subject to robust attention in recent years. They have many similarities: Both anger and fear arise when we feel threatened, either physically or emotionally. Both anger and fear trigger our “fight or flight” response system.

But there are key differences. Fear makes us withdraw, act with more caution, and disconnect from those around us, while anger has something of the opposite response: It encourages us to act, become more energetic, and attempt to improve our situation.

“While fear leads us to feel vulnerable and not in control, anger can be energizing and empowering,” says Dr. Bernard Goldman, founder of Anger Management Education and the author of Overcoming Destructive Anger. Anger “may be used to create distance in a relationship or to exert control, as in bullying. Or it can be channeled more constructively to further a cause, reflected, for example, by peaceful protest.”

Jennifer Lerner, a professor at Harvard, agrees. Her groundbreaking research of facial expressions has shown that anger provides a sense of control, heightens our sensitivity to injustice, and fills us with optimism.

“Anger can sometimes be adaptive. We’re showing for the first time that when you are in a situation that is maddening and in which anger or indignation are justifiable responses, anger is not bad for you.”

Dr. Jennifer Lerner, Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Management and Decision Science at the Harvard Kennedy School

Channeling anger constructively has a wide array of positive results.

Tim Woodman, a professor at the School of Sport in the UK, found that athletes perform better when they feel anger—they pitch faster and jump higher. Matthijs Baas and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam found that angry people are more creative—they have more original ideas and more inventive insights. Ernest Harburg and a team at the University of Michigan found in a 17-year study that people who vent their anger rather than bottle it up are less likely to die early and suffer heart attacks.

This doesn’t mean anger is always good. Even social scientists aren’t that naïve.

So what’s the best way to channel anger when you feel it coming on so that you have all these positive benefits and not the destructive and deadly negative ones?

Consider these simples steps:

1. Acknowledge that you’re angry.

John Riskind, a psychologist at George Mason University who uses cognitive behavioral therapy to treat people with anxiety and mood disorders, recommends using a speed-limit analogy to describe for yourself how angry you’re feeling. Here are some benchmarks:

35 mph = calm, cool, tranquil

45 mph = annoyed, irritated, frustrated

55 mph = mad, angry

65 mph = bitter, indignant

75 mph = irate, exasperated

85 mph = fuming, outraged

The sooner you acknowledge your speed, the faster you begin to contain a wreck before it happens.

2. Take a break

Years ago, I took a three-day course in negotiation studies from Willam Ury, the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and the co-author, with Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton, of Getting to Yes, which has sold 15 million copies in over 35 languages. One of his signature ideas: Go the balcony. Whenever you find yourself getting heated, pretend that you’re in a theater and go to the balcony, then look back on the fight as if it’s happening on stage. This trip to the balcony can last five minutes—or five days, as long as it takes to lower the temperature.

3. Expand the pie before you divide the pie

Finally, if you’re fighting over a certain situation or debating which step to take in a difficult life choice, rather than lock yourself into only two positions, use your time on the balcony to come up with more options. In negotiation speak, expand the pie before you divide the pie.

That way, once you’re back driving at a safe speed, you’ll have more options to explore. It’s precisely that ability to tame your emotions and turn the intensity of your feelings into positive alternatives that makes anger such a positive emotion to begin with. If fear fills you with lethargy and anger with passion, then it’s passion, in this case, that is far more likely to lead to a result that brings you joy rather than dread.

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Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.

You might enjoy reading these posts:

Week 1 in this series: Farewell to the Linear Life

The Forgotten Psychological Tool That Can Make You Happier Today

From High-School Dropout to Ph.D.

Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.