Let’s be honest, there is a lot to be angry about. You can be angry at politicians, people who hurt you, the world, family, friends, strangers, co-workers, bosses, God, and even yourself.  Anger itself is not bad or wrong, but it often gets a bad wrap.  People confuse feelings of anger for how people display anger.  Distinguishing between destructive and constructive ways of expressing our anger is a really important skill in taking care of ourselves.

When used in a constructive way, anger can help you heal from trauma and loss, help you be honest with others, and to face pain you may need to deal with.  Anger is destructive when it is used to act out against yourself or others, to give up, or to become bitter. Learning to harness your anger and understand it can feel powerful.  We can harness the energy of anger to take action in the world in order to make things right.

The first important step in developing constructive anger habits is to think of anger as a messenger.  Behind all anger is an unmet need.  Anger is a signal that something is wrong.  It may mean you are not taking care of yourself, that you have sadness to work through, or that something is happening in a relationship or from an event that feels unfair or unjust.  Anger is often a signal of something not being right.  If we ignore it, it can build up, and then come out in a way that is an overreaction to what is actually happening in a moment or we can stuff it down and seethe, eating ourselves up or turning it against ourselves.

An old style view that still persists is that anger needs to be vented.  The solution to anger was to “get it out”.  Research has shown, however, that acts of venting or catharsis actually increased people’s anger, resolving nothing that mattered to change a situation.  People also confuse angry outbursts as effective because people respond to it.  You may get results in the short term when you yell and scream, and you may feel powerful in the moment, but in the longer term it tends to erode and weaken relationships when you are experienced as out of control.  People tend to do and say things they regret, which can never be undone.

Constructive anger can be learned, which is the good news.  The key is listening to your anger as a messenger.  This may mean learning to tolerate the discomfort of the feelings you have when you’re angry.  Rather than actively discharging them, it helps to try to understand your anger and what it is telling you is wrong.  Once you identify what is the source, or the unmet need, then you are really powerful.  You can choose what to do and say about what is happening.  In addition, you can think through another person’s perspective.  Destructive anger tends to be judgemental and selfish.  It is demanding that someone take care of us or put our needs first. Constructive anger recognizes that other people have a point of view, and that we need to clarify a misunderstanding or work through a solution in a mutual way.

I have had the honor of running Anger Management groups for men.  What really struck me was how powerless many of these people felt.  The anger outbursts were reactions to feeling hurt or threatened in some way, and a fight flight response was all that they knew.  It was a really rewarding process to help these men and many made profound changes.  The first step was the hardest, though.  First, they needed to give themselves permission to have needs and to learn how to identify what they were.  Once they were able to take this step, the next step was allowing themselves to be vulnerable enough to ask for what they needed.  It was often so touching to see the results of this new skill:  “If you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need!”

Pardon me while I remove my dark ski mask, click off my flashlight, and pull off my gloves. I’ve just committed a robbery. For this week’s blog post I am stealing the concept and the term “The Long Now,” developed to refer to policy impacts, because I think when applied to my own personal life, it is a powerful phrase in how immediately it can change my perspective.

The term The Long Now was coined by Brian Eno after moving from England to New York.  He noticed that the here and now of Americans was much more immediate (this room, this five minutes), then what he was used to in England.  Mr. Eno became a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, based in San Francisco.  The aim of the Foundation is to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and to promote “slower/better” thinking.  Members acknowledge the increasingly short attention span of our culture driven by the acceleration of technology, the short horizon of current market driven economics, the election cycle perspective of current politics, and the distractions of personal multi-tasking. According to the website, the Foundation sponsors speakers and debates and encourages dialog in hopes to “creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”.  The guidelines of Long Now thinking involve promoting responsibility and rewarding patience.

When I first heard the term (thanks Jennifer), The Long Now, I immediately loved it.  It resonated with me on many levels, without really knowing the Foundation’s goals and motivation (10,000 years!).  Just by saying it, the phrase has a magical way of pulling me out of the current moment by extending that moment into the future.  It is a simply elegant way of thinking about the future consequences of my current behavior by emphasizing the link between the two.  It reminds me of the small steps, little choices, that will add up to where I will be someday.  When I think about today’s choices in terms of my Long Now, I can picture myself in the future having been the beneficiary or the victim of an incremental set of choices and events.  It simply reminds me that, in time, the future will be the current now.  Now that is motivating for me to help keep me on track with my goals –  I can have this indulgence now, or think of my ultimate goal in my Long Now.

The Long Now also offers me a soothing thought:  whatever I am going through now, this “now” is not how it will always be.  I may worry about some of my child’s decisions, for example, but if I think in the Long Now, I can have the confidence of knowing she will mature and grow, and be just fine in the long now.

I also love that by engaging in Long Now thinking I am encouraged into a mature and wise perspective that promotes ways of thinking and acting that I know is good for me and is associated with success and happiness.  I am encouraged to delay immediate gratification and think of my responsibility to my children and my children’s children, offering a sense of connection and generativity.  Long Now thinking lends itself to our sense of being an agent in determining our collective future. If I think in the now, I plant flowers.  If I think in the Long Now, I also plant trees.

So pardon my theft of this lofty 10,000 year perspective and slipping it into my own back pocket.  But as an idea, it feels extremely valuable, and as a practice, it feels priceless!

Note:  You can visit the Long Now library and bar, called the Interval, in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.  Chat with others and contemplate time with the 10,000 year clock.