You Can Get Angry and Still Have a Positive Mindset

As a life coach and blogger, you can’t say you want to live an authentic, inspirational life and only show your highlight reel. Real life has ups and downs. Living an authentic life also doesn’t mean telling everyone everything about your life either. You’re allowed to have private things you only share with your journal, therapist, or closest friends.

And you’re allowed to get angry. I’ve heard on more than one occasion, “You’re a life coach; you’re not supposed to get angry?” Yeah, surprise. We’re human. The only difference is, as a life coach, we provide our clients with tools to help them navigate through difficult moments in their lives. The reason we know these tools work is because we use them in our own lives.

I don’t know where we got the idea that if you’re on a personal or spiritual growth path and you meditate and do yoga, you should never get angry? As humans we are meant to feel. We have feelings for a reason. Our feelings give us a lot of information, so don’t ignore them. It’s when you don’t feel your emotions, or you live in anger all the time, that it becomes a problem. It’s how we move through our anger, sadness, and frustration and release it that is the practice of resilience.

Meditation teacher and psychotherapist Tara Brach shared a story in her book, “Radical Acceptance,” about a man whose therapist tells him to go to a silent retreat. The man goes on the silent retreat, and he can’t sit still in meditation. He feels restless and feels his agitation grow. He goes back to his therapist and says, “Why did you send me to that place? I don’t feel better at all.” The therapist responds, “You are feeling better. You’re feeling your anger better.”

When we feel our emotions, it helps us to release them. The key is the releasing part. You have to be willing to release it.

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So, what happened? What got me into a mood? I know this is small beans compared to real tragedies going on in the world today. Someone may wish to have such problems. But we all have those days where something doesn’t go right. Someone accidentally spills coffee on your brand new shirt, and you walk around with a visible stain for the rest of the day, not knowing if it will come out? Or you’re late for an appointment, and you can’t find a parking space. You finally see one, and as you get there, ready to pull in, someone sneaks in from the other side and nabs it from you. No matter what’s going on in our lives, these things minor things sitll piss us off.

As for me, I was coming out of the parking garage of my apartment building. I see an SUV coming. There’s only room for one car at a time to pass through. Without hesitation, being considerate, I try to back up into a spot so he can pass through. There are all these support beams in the garage. I see one in my rearview, but I don’t see there is a second one next to it. And I smash the rear of my car into it, and I hear a crack. I don’t know why the sensors in my car didn’t go off to alert me that I was about to hit a big cement column? I’m doubly upset because I’ve been so proud of how well I’ve been taking care of this car and the pristine shape she’s been in, and now this. And not happy because I just spent over a grand in the repair shop five days earlier on new brakes, rotors, brake fluid, and shocks, but I consider that maintenance.

Not only that, the SUV passes by me, and he doesn’t even say “thank you” for pulling over. Pissed because you try to do something nice, and you wind up with $2k worth of damages to your car.

I drive out of the garage. I don’t even want to take a look at it. I’m cursing the car. Cursing to get the anger out is good (as long as you’re not taking it out on someone else). After a couple of miles, I decided to pull over in a quiet part of my neighborhood to look at the damages. It’s not great, the bumper shifted and is slightly out of place, and the taillight is broken, and there’s a long scratch. But it doesn’t look as bad as I pictured it in my head. In my head, the trunk was all smashed and pushed in. So glad it wasn’t. But she still has damages that I know the body shop will say will require the entire bumper to be replaced.

I get back in my car. Still pissed. I try to think of better thoughts. “It could have been worse,” “At least your mammogram results came back ok.” Which I am grateful for, but nope, still mad. I’m not there yet.

It’s okay to be mad when something crappy happens. It’s the worst when people blow it off and tell you, “Don’t worry about it. It could have been worse.” Or the “At leasts.” “At least you didn’t get hurt” or “At least it was a support beam and not another car.” These people mean well, but it can come off as uncaring. Compassion and allowing people to feel heard does a lot more to help people feel better. Only my mother can get away with saying those things because it’s a lot better than hearing, “Why weren’t you paying attention?” But thank goodness she said, “At least you didn’t damage anything important. It’s just a fender.”

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I love what a friend of mine said. She said when she was a kid, if something bad happened, her mom gave them one day to cry about it; the next day, they had to work their way through it. That’s a great practice to get into, even if you’re not a kid.

I also remember something another friend told me, “When something bad happens, something good always happens to balance things out.” So, I am now waiting for something good to happen to balance this out.

Maybe, I’ll be able to feel better about it tomorrow, but right now, not happy that my pretty little car I’ve been taking such great care of is looking beaten up and bruised. And feeling a little bad that I did that to her. She’s been such a great car to me. But I tell her she still looks pretty.

The next day things did get better. Not 2k better, but better. When you’ve been doing the inner work for a long time and know what peace and freedom feel like, you no longer want to stay in the state of anger or victimhood because it doesn’t serve your wellbeing. You want to work through it to release it and return to the inner peace and freedom that is now your comfort zone.

When I went for my morning walk, I looked at the fender and kicked it with my sneaker. I was able to kick a part of it back into place! It didn’t look as bad as it did before. Had a great walk, got home, got good news, received a couple of lovely and funny texts from friends, did a podcast, and overall, it was a great day.

Remember, having a positive mindset, doesn’t mean that things will be pefect or that you have to act like nothing’s wrong when things go bad. You’re allowed to get angry and sad. It’s healthy feel what you’re feeling. But it’s about working your way through it, letting it go, and how fast can you can snap back into your peace and joy, and feel good again becaue you deserve to feel good. This will keep you resilient. 

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Kat OM is a resilience mindset coach based in New York City. Her signature program, Mindful Resilience, provides 21 tools and lessons to help keep you emotionally resilient through life. She is also the author of Resilient Love: Turn Your Wounds into Your Wings. You can also find Kat OM at: KatOMLife.com | IG: kat.om.transform.your.life | FB: katOM30