I taught my Sunday School class last Sunday and the topic was on anger. Basically we talked about anger and how to deal with it by looking at Proverbs and discussing anger in our lives. We have a great Sunday School class because we tend to be really honest with one another. If someone makes a mistake in their life, they own up to it and move on. Contrast that to other classes I’ve been in where everyone is fine all the time. Anyway, the discussion on anger was very interesting. Many of the men said they used to have a bad temper, but they’ve controlled it now. Clearly we can’t control when we get angry, but we can definitely control the results of that anger.

The concept of the Hulk came out. The idea that when we get angry, we turn into something different than ourselves, something with less control. Everyone could relate to that and we all had anecdotes about times we just simply lost control. What was interesting was that everyone agreed that when they did lose control, they were fully conscious of what they were doing; they just didn’t do anything to stop it.

And that, I think is key. We can control our anger. We willingly lose control and we can willingly regain it. In fact in almost every case, losing control ends up costing more than maintaining control. The repercussions of losing it are often far greater than if you maintained control.

The other thing that was brought up was that even when you lose control of your anger, you can stop the escalation right in the middle, but no one in the group ever did. Even when they could see the hurt and conflict the anger was causing, we still continued. Realizing that you can stop it at any time should help control our anger, but it apparently doesn’t.

There was a lot of discussion about our kids and teaching them how to deal with anger and deal with the anger they cause us. I mentioned how Piers deals with it. He can get frustrated pretty easily at times but he knows he can’t throw a fit or act out about it. Instead, he does what I call “Te Chi.” He tenses up his muscles and does slow motion fighting moves to let out his frustration. And there is some great truth in that. When we get angry we have energy that needs to be displaced somehow thanks to the adrenaline dumped into our system. That is why losing control is so relieving; it burns the energy our body just provided. So when you get angry, find some positive way to release the energy inside.

You can control your anger, and your life will become better for it. So the next time you feel you are getting angry, deal with it right then. Don’t let it build until you explode. Believe me, no one likes you when you are angry.