The Roots of Rage

Rage is a powerful word.
It brings up intense feelings and often implies destruction, we have all heard of a killing rage haven’t we? Everywhere we look today, from our own children to the wars around the world – rage seems to be running the human reality show.

Everybody seems to be so angry and enraged about something.
This one says their god is the god, this one says this land is mine, this one says that the color of my skin offends them, that one says you have more than I do and I want it. Traffic jams, computers that glitch, emails that don’t go where you send them, people that drive stupid, the list is as never ending as the amount of people there are to add to it.

Take a moment to re-read that list.
When you do none of the things seem important enough to become enraged over do they? They are all just moments in time or opinions, and interestingly they are all things we have no control over.

I believe rage is an emotion stemming from feeling out of control. Even the most justified rage, perhaps over the death of a loved one, comes from that primitive place inside us that says if we aren’t in control we aren’t safe. We didn’t ask for the event, we weren’t ready for it, someone forced it on us….we couldn’t control it.

Rage and anger are very powerful feelings, yet are just that, feelings.
We can let them take us over or we can chose to use them as tools for clarity and growth. Feelings are healthy; I believe it is when we let them get twisted up with shame and judgment that they take a darker, unhealthy and sometimes even a dangerous turn.

We have no control over anything but ourselves.
We really have no control over anything. We created time, yet we try to fool time with daylight savings (don’t get me started on that folly), we try to stop aging (again – folly!), we create laws and then break them, better yet raise up a bunch of lawyers dedicated to finding the loop holes to get around them; so many examples of the simple fact that control is an illusion. One we all agree to try and uphold, but illusion none the less.

I’m not coaching indifference.
I am coaching awareness of your truth – what you are worth and what you bring to the table. I’m coaching choice – you can choose to vent, to rant and rave in your car or to a friend or just to yourself…or you can chose to do something horrible that you can’t take back. When you know your personal truth you can feel rage and then realize it is based on fear of feeling unsafe, ignored, unheard, or whatever your personal hot button is. That allows you to step back a bit from the moment and chose your reaction as opposed to just a knee jerk reaction which almost always goes badly. On the most basic level it allows you to choose between punching a person, punching a wall or just perhaps not punching anything at all (to lighten the mood go ahead and read that in the Dr. Seuss cadence).

Humor aside, it always comes back to knowing a very basic truth which is: the only thing you can control is you. That ties back to my belief that the only person you ever really can know is yourself, and you do that by finding and accepting your personal truth. Think of it like this, a hammer generally makes a pretty terrible wrench. When you know your truth you can apply your actual abilities to any situation with confidence and power instead of trying to force something to work and constantly feeling lousy, awkward and helpless.

Are you ready to find out what you bring to the table?
To let go of trying to control everything around you and to stop being a hammer when you are actually a... (I will let you fill in that blank)? It is time to step up to manifesting and being in control of the only aspect that matters, yourself.