« June 2006 | Main | August 2006 »
July 30, 2006 10:49 PM
How to Resolve Any Problem and Get What You Want
People who feel angry often think they are angry because the other person “made them” angry.
This anger management step focuses on the power you have to undo this misconception and choose to deal with angry people in a way that makes life more wonderful for you and others.
To do this, you will identify:
1) Your clear observation without judgment, wrongness or blame
2) Your feelings,
3) Your needs and
4) A clear request.
What is a clear request?
“I want you to be more reliable,” is not clear or achievable.
Why?
Because it leaves the listener having to read your mind and guess exactly what “reliable” means and what you are asking him to do to achieve it.
He may believe he is being reliable by sitting on the couch day after day, because you can rely on the fact you can find him there.
But you may view reliable as getting off the couch and taking out the garbage.
Here is how to transform anger and deal with angry people so you can resolve any problem and get what you want.
The idea is to imagine the other person doing or saying something, right now, that is in agreement with your desire and likely to meet your need.
Ask yourself, “At this moment, exactly what could the person say or do to meet my needs?”
Using the steps from the Anger Management System, a woman passed over for a promotion becomes:
1) (Observation) Clear about describing the situation without judgment or punishment
2) (Identify Feelings and Needs) She is aware her anger is about the need for recognition, for respect and to feed her family. As she identifies her needs, she finds she is also feeling sad, scared and hopeless.
3) (Request) Aware she needs to make a clear, positive request for action here in the now.
So she may say to her boss, “Would you agree to review with me, within the next week, at least two projects I have already completed that you believe have contributed to improvement in our department?”
You may say, but what if the other person is wrong or at fault? What if they have done something that needs punishment?
Posted by Lori Prokop at 10:49 PM | Comments (1)
July 28, 2006 03:55 AM
Anger Management Miracle: Focus on What You
Anger focuses on situations and actions we don’t want.
This is like wanting the tire on your car to stop being flat.
You can want all you want.
But, to resolve the problem, you have to identify what needs to be done to fix the tire. Then take the action to achieve it.
But, it can be hard to figure out what you need.
Especially since most people have been programmed from early ages that needs are bad or selfish, and a person is better, stronger or more acceptable when they do not have needs.
This is like saying a person who stops breathing is better, stronger or more acceptable than the humans who need oxygen to stay alive. It makes no sense.
Needs are an inner compass and direction showing us how to live and do well.
Needs are your inborn owner’s manual. They are interactive so when your needs are not being met, your emotions and body let you know.
Improve Your Life Instantly by Identifying Your Needs
Life can be tough, really tough. People can be…well you know…they can be difficult, to say the least.
When you feel the twings of anger, this is the red light warning signal that your needs are not being met. It is the inner compass saying “go inside and ask yourself what you want and need.”
Say a person gets angry when around a co-worker. The question becomes, when you are around this person, what needs are not being met?
It could be the person is not helping you meet your needs or it could be the person is just triggering a reminder that your needs are not being met.
Let’s say you were in a meeting with a person who interrupted you.
If you are trained to think and communicate like most people, you might say to the other person, “You are an idiot. You make me so mad. I want you to stop interrupting me.”
The problem with this response is that the other person hears how they are wrong (blame) and what you DON’T want. This gives the other person every option but what you don’t want. They may figure, “Okay, I will make sure I don’t interrupt you by making sure you don’t talk.”
The other person may solve the problem by dominating the conversation.
Or here is another possible result from this statement. The other person may stop talking and expect you to mind-read, punishing when your guesses are wrong.
How to Get What You Want
You are much more likely to get your needs met when you formulate a positive request that clearly states what actions would meet your needs.
For example, “Would you agree to listen until I finish my sentence, and keep your comments related directly to the topic at hand?”
Place the focus on what you do want, not on what you don’t want.
Posted by Lori Prokop at 3:55 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2006 12:40 AM
Building Self Confidence While Ending Fear and Worry
“What do you want?”
That statement can feel like a loaded question.
We are taught “not to want” by people who want their lives to feel “easier” by not having to help others achieve well-being. This doesn’t mean they were bad people. Rather, they had needs they chose to put before your needs.
Often, they didn’t even realize how to identify and get their own needs met and, as a result, didn’t have the skills to help or teach others.
Having unmet needs is the source of low self-worth, lack of self confidence and fear and worry for many people.
Part of living a peaceful life, including achieving world peace, is realizing that overlooking or postponing your own and others’ needs and well-being is very costly and only temporary.
What’s the First Clue You Have Unmet Needs?
Anger is the warning signal that you have unmet needs.
What a person is saying, often subconsciously, when expressing anger is, “Help me identify my unmet needs and get them met.”
What they are often consciously saying is some form of blame, shame or wrongness such as, “You make me so angry. If you wouldn’t do that, then I wouldn’t be angry.”
You have choice.
You can choose to take their verbalized comments personally and, therefore, create your own unmet needs and perpetuate anger.
Or you can see anger for the signal that it is.
You can realize when people express anger in the form of judgment, shame, blame, guilt or wrongness, they do not have the skills to identify and communicate their needs.
Without these skills, their needs go unfulfilled.
When even ONE person in a group has these anger management skills they can lead the group in such as way as to end conflict, worry, fear and, even, violence (which is conflict, fear and worry that has fermented into an explosive state).
End the Fear of Fear and Worry
Using the Anger Management System, an employee who felt the boss was unprofessional, was disrespectful and had a big mouth would look underneath the employee’s anger and translate his judgments into needs.
He may realize he values reliability, clear communication, timeliness and trust. Once needs are identified, the employee’s feelings move from anger to worry, anxiety and disappointment.
Even the harshest labels like freak, scammer or psychopath are just tragic and costly expressions of unmet needs by name callers who lack the communication skills to identify and get their needs met.
It’s tragic because the act of making another person wrong or punishing another person almost guarantees the blamer’s needs will go undiscovered, unexpressed and unmet.
Even if it appears the blamer’s needs are being met, it will be costly and only temporary for the blamer.
Overcoming Fear and Worry
Once you discover what you need, you are in the powerful position of overcoming fear and worry and choosing life-enhancing actions to get your needs met.
Posted by Lori Prokop at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2006 02:41 AM
Anger Management Secret: How to Overcome Fear and Anger Quickly
Most people, especially women, have been taught it is bad or weak to have needs. We have been trained to ignore or discount our wants and desires.
This always backfires.
Wants and desires are innate mechanisms to keep us alive and evolving. It would be like repressing your breath, heart beat or digestion and still expecting to live a full, happy, healthy life.
Every human being has needs, all the time.
We all have the exact same needs. Every need that you have, the people you see as enemies or “wrong” also have. The only people who don’t have needs are dead.
We all need respect, safety, nourishment, harmony, connection and love to name a few.
What Few People Know About Anger
Anger is a sign that “blame thinking” is going on in your head, and you have unmet needs.
If your blame statement was, “She never listens to me,” what emotions or body sensations would you feel?
Would you feel anxious, sad, rage, frustration or confused?
Depending on the situation, you might be happy this person is ignoring you.
So the act of being ignored does not always cause lower level emotions.
If you were speeding in your car and drove by a police officer, you might be happy if she ignored you.
So being ignored is not always something that triggers anger or blame. It is how you think about the situation that triggers the anger or blame.
Posted by Lori Prokop at 2:41 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2006 01:07 AM
How to Overcome Anger and Find Inner Peace
Anger is a sign you have lost focus of what you want and, instead, are focusing on judging or punishing yourself or others. This is step three in my 10 step Anger Management System
Other people’s words and actions can never “make” you feel any certain way.
Your feelings results from whether or not your needs are being met.
Anger comes from focusing your attention on what another person “should” or “shouldn’t” be doing and judging them as “wrong” or “bad.”
Instead, anger’s purpose is to let you know its time to focus on your needs. Once you do, anger is replaced by other feelings. Transforming anger in this way is not repressing it or “cooling down.”
When you are aware of your unmet needs, you could have very intense, painful emotions that will be different than anger.
As your focus changes from judgment or punishment to identifying what you need, anger moves to sadness, hurt, fear or disappointment.
Posted by Lori Prokop at 1:07 AM | Comments (0)
July 9, 2006 01:50 PM
How to Build Self-Confidence by Resolving Anger
When you ask angry people what they are fuming about, they often say someone did something or said something wrong.
In a business setting, someone might answer, “He’s so unprofessional and disrespectful. He is a jerk, is a bad boss and has a big mouth.”
This statement tells very little about what’s really happening.
In this anger management step, you want “just the facts.”
Here is a statement containing facts. Observe the difference.
“He interrupts people before they finish their sentences. When we are trying to resolve problems, instead of staying on the subject, he tells stories that have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and this makes our meetings run longer than scheduled.”
In this anger management step, you peel the layers until you can discover and define, without blame or judgment, what is not meeting your needs.
To successfully deal with angry people (yourself and others), be it an angry adult or angry kid, state a clear observation of the situation.
When I outline this step, sometimes I hear, “But, the other person is WRONG! Lori Prokop, how can you expect me to be detached and talk about just the facts?”
Statements like, “You insulted me,” or “I feel disrespected,” or “You are always trying to make me do what you want”:
1) Imply the other person is wrong,
2) Are observations which include blame or judgment and
3) Don’t clearly describe what actually happened
How do you make a clear observation?
Think of a video camera. It has no emotions. It records only fact. Ask yourself this question:
“If a video camera recorded this, and spoke in only fact, how would it describe this situation?”
It might sound like “I heard you say that you don’t like it when I yell,” or “You said you don’t agree with the deadline,” or “You threw the vase across the room and it broke,” or “You did not come home last night and did not call to let us know you were safe.”
Once you view situations and speak from this perspective, you can begin to deal with angry people successfully.
Posted by Lori Prokop at 1:50 PM | Comments (2)
