If I said that aggression is a normal human behaviour you and that even you as the calmest person on earth have this trait inside you, you may disagree with me, you may even jump at me and say that I am wrong. That’s good because then I have proved my point :-). Just disagreeing with a statement gets your steam going and boiling is the underlying fact and existence of this emotion.

There is in fact nothing wrong with aggression. It is just one of our other survival instincts that in today’s society is not acceptable and equally misunderstood. Aggressiveness or emotional steam in fact is necessary for you to achieve your goals and dreams. You can’t merely have a big dream and achieve it passively, you need to pursue it with full steam. This steam is the same underlying mechanism that then fires off in the wrong direction when it is not understood and controlled.

Often when we set off to achieve any goal we are met with obstacles and other problems that stop us from proceeding at the same speed as we had intended. Imagine you have set yourself a goal of getting to the office punctually and you leave on time, you are driving at the maximum allowed speed but then you hit traffic. The traffic comes to a hault, you stop, one foot on the break and the other foot on the accelerator revving it up and waiting for the traffic to start moving. Or imagine the same situation and you are running, but you have to slow down because you enter a dense pedestrian zone. You are all full of energy and adrenaline, you want to go fast but suddenly you have to slow down to walking speed or speed.

This is when the steam starts building up, because your body is geared to produce the same amount of energy. It is pouring into your muscles and body but it is not being used. It is building up and building up.

At work is no different. We get FRUSTRATED (see tip 1) when things don’t go as we had planned. We don’t know what to do and we want to keep pushing ahead with the same speed as you can imagine the result could be disastrous if we don’t stop or slow down to analyze.

The good news is that the solution is simple. If you run, you already know how to deal with it, when you hit dense pedestrian areas or traffic lights, you still keep the motion of running but you are in one place. Basically, you are still using that energy and you are allowing it to be used. Emotional steam is no different and we need to let it off. Once we understand the underlying mechanism it is easy.

So next time you get frustrated at work because something doesn’t go your way, remember that all you need is to stop, breathe, think and find a way for using that excess energy that is building up in a different area in order to achieve your objectives.

Additionally one of the best ways to balance this emotional steam is exercise; anything that basically uses this excess energy. Walking, running, and cycling are some quick easy ways and if you find yourself with even a higher level of frustration then pick up something that includes hitting balls, like golf, tennis or even boxing and other sports of the kind. All these allow you to let off those emotional steams that build up inside you and clear your mind.

Unused emotional steam is destructive, it is self-destructive which often will express itself in the form of ulcers, high blood pressure, irritability, rudeness, fault finding, etc.

In the next blog post, we shall tackle the next letter in FAILURE. The letter I for Insecurity

I help entrepreneurs throughout their journey. Are you feeling FRUSTRATED and don’t know how to burn this excess energy? give me a call. Together we can work out a way for you to direct that energy in the right way.