Gesture of Anger

Anger

Have you ever been so angry that you’re shaking? So angry that rationality goes right out the window? When you get angry, how do you handle it?

Angry people can be rational or irrational. Anger itself doesn’t have consequences, but acting on that anger does, and the consequences of those actions can be positive or negative.

Anger is designed to be a survival mechanism. When bad things happen to us, anger provides us with adrenalin along with a drive to overcome it. But how we define “bad thing” and what we mean by “overcome” is where we can run into trouble. When acting in anger, it would help to ask ourselves, “What do I hope to achieve?”

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Woman in Field smelling flowers

Senses

What are your senses telling you right now?

You are probably already aware of what you are seeing, and possibly hearing.

How about your other senses—do they keep a place in your consciousness, or do they rise to the surface only when they come by something really good or really bad?

Our senses are our inputs from the physical world, but they can also influence our inner lives in ways we might not even realize.

When I’m in a natural place, such as the woods or a marsh, the inputs I get from my senses drive my emotions and set the tone for my frame of mind. Those experiences always create a space of contemplation and introspection for me, which can influence my inner life moving forward.

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Man in the woods in a moment of clarity

Clarity

Static. Distraction. White noise.

In the modern world, endless activities and interruptions can divert our minds from what is in front of us and interfere with our clarity.

We check e-mail, text, take phone calls, go to meetings; with so many distractions, uninterrupted time—doing anything—seems like a luxury.

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Portrait of young woman with finger on lips.

Silence

How would you describe the soundtrack of your life?

What is the nature of the sounds—both those inside your head and those reaching your ears—that you hear moment-by-moment and day-to-day?

Do you ever experience silence? Are you comfortable with it?

My soundtrack is very musical. Music helps motivate me and influences my mood. I listen to music in the car, when I exercise, and at other times where I might have chosen silence. But silence is never really silent, is it?

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Double exposure of girl and autumn landscape

Signals

The Universe is talking to us all the time; it’s up to us to listen.

We all have signals in our life that let us know something is not quite right—signals that we should acknowledge and on which we should act.

These signals include how we feel, physically and emotionally. They also include how people react to us or the state of our relationships, how we spend our time, our energy level, and our ability to focus. Each of these can say a lot about the state of our lives.

Do we pay attention to these signals? Do we even know what they are?

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