I realised I had an anger management problem when, during a particularly bad week, I tried to throw the telly out the window (without even opening it first). The reason, I couldn’t get the parental lock off the telly and I needed to do my exercise DVD to get fit and de-stress.
An extreme reaction? You betcha.
After that I told myself I would never get worked up again.
The next day an email brought me more problems. I tried to reply to it. My phone wouldn’t cooperate, so I threw that across the room. Luckily, it wasn’t broken.
These incidents left me realising that I had let things get on top of me. One of the reasons was I was in a hurry to get things done.
Once, I managed to calm down, I made myself a vow - that I'd never let myself get that worked up again. This meant doing a few things -
- Not rushing to get things done. The people I was dealing with were taking all the time in the world, so why was I the one doing everything ASAP?
- Taking time to sit down and watch some old comedy videos/DVDs. Well, they do say laughter is the best medicine. I howled with laughter through The Office up until the first part of the Christmas special that had me thinking 'is this rally comedy?'
- Actually writing something I wanted to write instead of something I needed to. In my case that's The Waking Dead, my zombie novel set in Glasgow.
- Chasing my rescue dog Benjy around the room and basically crawling about the floor with him. Ok, I looked stupid when anyone came in, but I had a good time.
- Taking my Kalms. They have valerian that acts as a mild sedative.
