Did you know that if you don’t deal with your temper problem, it can make you suffer a heart attack? That’s right! According to research conducted in 2014 by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health, when one gets angry often, it can raise his or her risk of getting a heart attack.

So, how can you deal with anger? How can you control anger outbursts so that you can avoid putting your heart at risk?

In this article, I want to look at some anger management issues and what you can do to control your anger and frustration.

Now, let’s take a look at the strategies you can adopt to help you keep that temper in check.

1. Practice Tuning Your Mind For Peace Regularly

Tuning your mind for peace is a method of relaxing your nerves, soul, and spirit, and also a way to help you gain complete mastery over your thoughts and feelings so that you will find it easier to control your emotions. If you practice it often, you will be able to relax even under provocation and you will find it easier to restrain yourself when someone annoys you. It is one of the anger management exercises that you can do to help you to deal with anger.

Set aside at least 30 minutes each day to do this exercise if you want it to be effective.

To do this exercise:

Sit quietly on a mat on the floor of your room, or any other room where you can have privacy, and where you can concentrate without distraction for about 30 minutes, with your legs crossed. Play music whose lyrics are conciliatory and which talk about forgiveness, peace.
Take in 10 deep breaths and exhale slowly through your mouth.
Look straight ahead of you, place your hands on your thighs, and pick a positive word or phrase you can focus on that talks about peace, forgiveness, calmness, reconciliation, or letting go of emotional pain. For example, you might pick a words such as, “I am for peace,” or “Peace!” or “It is good to forgive,” or “Peace promotes unity,” or “Jesus forgave me for my sins so I must also forgive,” or “Remain calm!” or “Forgive and forget,” or “Control your anger! Don’t let your anger control you!” It must be a short word or phrase which you will find it easy to focus on.
Then, close your eyes, relax all the muscles of your body, and focus your mind on the music.
Breathe slowly. As you breathe in, repeat the word or phrase you chose, and as you breathe out say, “Body calm down!”
Continue doing this for 30 minutes.
You may repeat it later in the day.

2. Learn To Discipline Yourself By Practicing Positive Small Habits

Every day, practice one good habit, no matter how small. It will teach you how to discipline and control yourself better, and that will impact on your ability to curb your anger—the discipline you learn will help you to choose to refuse to swear at the person who irritates you or provokes you, to refrain from insulting the man or woman who ridicules you or tries to humiliate you and so on, when you are very angry.

Some of the small habits you can practice are:

Make your bed when you wake up.
Go for a 10 minute brisk walk every evening before you sleep.
Read your Bible for five minutes every day before you sleep.
Drink 10 glasses of water every day.
Listen to the 6.00 pm news every day.

3. Do Things That Annoy You, Sometimes

Once or twice every week, practice doing some of the things that annoy you. Make sure you engage in the activity with all seriousness. Grumble, murmur, complain, but do it. This will teach you to learn to bring your feelings under subjection to your will when your whole body is rebelling against something that your soul hates.

Consequently, you will learn to restrain yourself when you are experiencing what you hate, to tolerate what you abhor, and that will build your capacity to handle provocations and irritations better.

So, for example, if you hate watching soap operas, watch one or two episodes of a soap opera every weekend.
If you hate doing the laundry, do it for your wife this weekend and you will be surprised with the kind of love your wife will show to you subsequently.
Volunteer to dispose of the garbage this weekend, if you have never done it in your life before.
Humble yourself and feed your dog and cat, if doing that job always makes you mad.
Say “please” to your boss whom you feel like punching in the face whenever you see him or her.

4. Plan In Advance How You Will Deal With Anger

Recall some of the situations and the words which people say which makes you boil inside. Write down these anger triggers.

Beside those points, write down what you will do when someone says something you don’t like or when a man or a woman does something you hate. For example, if you get angry every time someone says you are a lazy guy, write down, “I get mad when people say I am lazy.” Beside that write, “The next time someone says I am lazy, I will tell him to mind his own business and then I will walk off.” Or, if you get annoyed every time someone crosses you in traffic, write something such as, “I feel like punching those careless drivers,” and beside it write something such as, “I will try to sigh deeply, I will give that driver a piece of my mind, but try not to insult him.”

Read this list to yourself often, rehearse the things you will say or do to help maintain peace when you are provoked so that you can prepare your mind well in advance of threatening situations.

When you create such a plan before annoying events happen, you are more likely to be able to resist the urge to abuse the other person verbally or physically because you would have envisaged how you will respond to annoying situations, you would have thought about the different strategies you would use to manage annoying situations, and that will give you options so you would have built your capacity to restrain yourself.

5. Learn To Be Tolerant

One way to deal with anger is to learn how to tolerate people.

How can you do this?

Try to empathize with the person who is annoying you because that person’s upbringing and training may be the cause of his or her offensive behavior.
So, for example, when someone insults you whilst you are in traffic, think to yourself, “It is possible that guy did not receive any good training at home. Maybe, he is from a broken home and so he did not have the privilege of being trained by a mother and a father. Let me give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Use “I” statements instead of using “You” statements when someone annoys you. For example, instead of saying, “You are very stupid for bumping into me,” choose to say something such as, “I am not happy that you bumped into me. I would appreciate it if you would look where you are going!”
If someone says something that you find difficult to stomach, try to understand what the other person said instead of avoiding to confront the person, but rather choosing to create misconceptions in your mind—misconceptions can fuel bitter feelings in your heart which will make it easier to feel angry towards the other person.

6. Pray Often

Research suggests that when a person prays it can help him or her to control his or her anger. Therefore, when someone annoys you and you feel that your temper is rising and you feel that you are about to explode, bow your head and say a prayer such as, “Dear God, what Isaac just did hurt me very much. I am very angry with him and I would really like to insult him or ridicule him. However, that may cause friction between the two of us. Lord, please help me to control my anger. Please help me to remember some of the good things Isaac has done for me in the past so that I will feel some good will towards him. Please help me to calm down so that I can manage this angry feeling. Amen.”

Keep on praying and as you do God, through His Holy Spirit, will bring conciliatory thoughts into your mind which will help you to manage your feelings better.

Conclusion

To deal with anger, tune your mind so that it will choose peace over conflict whenever you are angry, practice good habits to help you learn how to control yourself better, build your capacity to tolerate annoying situations, always prepare yourself for provoking situations, try to be tolerant, and ask God to help you control your anger,in addition to these tips too.