Today I want to share with you my personal story of how I lift myself up from a place of feeling angry and frustrated to a place of feeling good at the end of the day.
Perhaps some of the tools I’ve used can help you release anger and uplift your mood too.
My morning started like this. I was fuming with anger when my 3-year-old kept on testing and pushing my boundaries until I couldn’t stand it anymore. If you know the emoji of a head explosion 🤯, that was me.
And yes, I was yelling. I was shouting. I needed to walk away and restrain myself with my last ounce of mental strength to cool off before I said anything else that I would regret later.
I was able to get a few moments by myself. So I went to my journal. I needed to express my anger. There was also guilt. It was not just anger to my 3-year-old. It was anger towards myself. Why were there so many obstacles in my life? Why was I still feeling such a failure after all the work I’ve done on myself? Why was I such a bad mom?
I just wanted to shut myself off from the entire world and be by myself. That lasted for 10 minutes before my kids came crashing into my meditation space.
From that moment I made a choice. I could choose to push my kids away and asked them to leave mom alone and lock the door. Or knowing that they came to find me because they wanted to spend time with me, I could do something together.
I knew I desperately needed a fire release ceremony for myself, so I invited my kids to do it together. We’ve done it many times before already, so it was nothing new and my kids loved it.
We blew what we wanted to release onto our wooden sticks and burnt them in the fire. Then we all picked an oracle card.
The card I got was the horse spirit – freedom as yours. I sighed with relief when I got this card. This was exactly what I needed to hear. The freedom to choose how to proceed with the rest of the day was mine. I could choose to stay in this anger space and tell myself my entire day was ruined. Or I could choose to be open and make different decisions to help me feel better.
For the rest of the day, I did some things different.
First I cooked lunch for myself. It was a new recipe, and even though it didn’t turn out perfect, I didn’t beat myself up. I didn’t allow my inner critic to take over so my mind couldn’t reconfirm that I was having a bad day.
I felt satisfied with the taste and the fact that I did something for myself. The dish wasn’t cooked for the kids or my husband, so there was no need for any approval of taste from them.
After lunch we sent our elder son to a class while our younger son was napping in the car. I had my quiet time then. I treated myself to a cup of green tea latte, and I decided to continue editing my weekly card message videos. I finished three videos by the time my son finished his class and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I was starting to feel good.
We had the rest of the afternoon free, so I thought we could go visit this new kids’ playground and café that we’ve never been before. Obviously my kids had so much fun there and we got to play some games there together too. For dinner my husband asked if I wanted to try this new place we’ve been thinking to go, and I said yes.
By the end of the night before we slept, my kids and I always shared what we were grateful for the day. I was really grateful for visiting these new places and also for how my day turned around from feeling angry to feeling awesome.
So here is the summary of what I’ve done throughout the day:
When we are feeling so full of emotions, whether it’s grief or anger, stress or resentment, instead of trying to stop yourself from feeling, acknowledge your emotions. You can say it out loud or just in your head.
In my case, when I was fuming I went to a separate room and I was saying my feelings out loud to myself. I felt I was disrespected. I felt frustrated that I wasn’t listened to. I felt annoyed because I didn’t know how to fix my son’s behavioral problem. I felt powerless and guilty.
Acknowledging my emotions allowed myself to accept where I was then. I wasn’t trying to fix, change or stop how I was feeling. I held space for my anger to express itself.
Emotions are energy in motion. In the space with so much pent-up emotions, practices such as journaling and fire ceremony can help with releasing emotions. Journaling helped with releasing my thoughts, and the fire release ceremony helped with releasing my emotions.
Looking how the fire was burning the wooden stick reminded me that anger needed time and space to release. Eventually the fire would stop burning the wooden stick by itself when the stick would turn into ashes. All I needed to do was to have a container for the wooden stick to burn safely. Just like our emotions, when we can create a safe space for them to be expressed, eventually the emotions would transform into a different energy.
Reading the oracle card’s message reminded me what I should focus on. Sometimes when we are feeling overwhelmed with emotions, our thoughts can spiral down the rabbit hole, believing our inner critic’s words to be true.
When I read the oracle card message, I remember what I needed to focus on and that became the center of my attention. The freedom of choice was with me. Knowing how important self-talk was to our mental health, I knew I needed to change my narrative. It was up to me to decide how I wanted to feel from now on.
Ideally when we are doing release work we already have a quiet space to do so. I had a short time but nevertheless I still had that moment. Sometimes we do need to walk away from the trigger just for a bit if possible, and with my kids, I asked someone else to step in to help.
Even though my ideal self-care at that moment would be a massage but it was not possible given the circumstances. Instead of sulking about it, I created other moments of self-care. I treated myself with a green tea latte. I worked on things I enjoyed and gained a sense of accomplishment.
When you are feeling low with energy or down with your emotions, it’s always a sign from your body that you need to give yourself some tender loving care. Self-care doesn’t need to take hours. Create pockets of self-care moments for yourself that can bring you contentment.
Body movement can be a great way to lift up your spirit. What’s more fun than dancing silly and singing out loud and not give a crap about anything else in the world. Scientific research has shown that singing is a natural anti-depressant, and dancing releases endorphins which help to boost our mood and reduce stress.
In my case we were listening to my kids’ favorite songs while we were driving in car that day, and we totally got to rock out a few tunes together.
The most helpful thing I’ve done that day to help myself feel better was to do and explore something new. I cooked a new dish. I explored somewhere new with my family.
This gave me a sense of adventure and travel and shifted my mood tremendously. According to an article from Harvard Business Review “The Mental Benefits of Vacationing Somewhere New” by Todd B. Kashdan, one benefit is increased emotional agility, which is to observe our emotions instead of reacting right away, and to intentionally decide how to manage them.
If traveling to somewhere new locally or even getting out of the house is not possible, try to do something different at home and see how your mood shifts.
At the end of the night I could reflect my day with gratitude.
However, I wouldn’t recommend forcing yourself to practice gratitude if you were still feeling overwhelmed with a lot of emotions.
It is important to hold space for our emotions and to allow our emotions to be heard and acknowledged first. If you are telling yourself that you should be grateful, then that may not be true gratitude from your heart. That may be your mind trying to intellectualize your emotional experience and to protect you from feeling pain (also no judgment or criticism here, just be kind to yourself if you observe this happening).
When you feel that you are slowly shifting out from a place of negativity to a more neutral state (it doesn’t have to be a positive state yet), then you can start practicing gratitude. See how that resonates and if you can feel gratitude arising naturally from your heart.
Scientific research has shown that the practice of gratitude can increase feelings of happiness, life satisfaction, and resilience so I highly recommend keeping this practice consistent no matter what.
Conclusion
By the end of the day I was feeling real good and proud of how my day went. I filled up my inner well with nourishment on the physical, emotional and mental level. I didn’t expect or need myself to feel better. I just stayed open to this possibility and consciously made choices to stay on this course.
It is natural for our emotions to go up and down. This is the human life experience. It is unrealistic to expect that we can always stay in a positive state of love and bliss, unless you are already enlightened.
It is more important to embrace this cyclic nature that we live in, and to know that we can stand back up when we fall on our face and feet.
Here’s a recap of the 7 tools and practices I’ve used to lift myself up from feeling angry to awesome:
- Start with acknowledgment and acceptance
- Release emotions with journaling and fire ceremony
- Make a choice for new possibilities
- Create solo time for self-care
- Dance and sing
- Explore somewhere new
- Reflect with gratitude
If I can do it, so can you.
If you use other tools and practices to help lift yourself up, feel free to share them with me, I’d love to know. Connect with me here.
