I’ve received a series of queries lately from people asking me how to manage anger related stress.

When anger sets in, our bodies react in much in the same way as they do to stress – heart rate increases, breathing changes, the mind and heart feel strained or squeezed.

Anger is a horrible feeling – especially anger over issues that feel out of your control.

My advice is to consider where your power is when you are angry.

Become connected to the things you can control, or the ways in which your actions (or reactions) can leave you feeling empowered as opposed to drained and helpless – or worse, even further enflamed.

Anger is a reaction and on its own serves a relatively useless purpose.

It is however, a powerful tool which can be used as a call to action: a motivator or vehicle to change.

Use anger to inspire you toward action. Whether that means deciding how you will not allow said circumstance to compromise your mood, health, relationships, productivity, goals. Or deciding to use it as a motivator to create a plan of action toward productive, life enhancing or circumstance changing, change.

Use it. Don’t let it rule you. And above all, don’t let your own perceptions be so immovable that you become mired in the negativity that inevitably surrounds anger.

If you need to be a voice for change, be one. To yourself, or in a productive way, for others. If you want to use anger to finally diffuse what you’ve been waiting to let go of because you just can’t be angry anymore, then use it.

Don’t forget to think about your mental and physical health – prioritize it.