Having healthy anger.

This month marks the 8 year anniversary of my business.

I had my first clients this time 8 years ago.

That's pretty wild. And, for those of you who know me personally and have followed me professionally, a lot has happened and changed in those 8 years.

For those of you just getting to know me or coming back to see what's new and good in my life, welcome. There's a lot to catch you up on.

I'll start with my anger. I mean, it's a good place to start, especially given the current state of things in the world. If my life has taught me anything, it's how to achieve a state of having healthy anger. I'm not a psychologist, so I won't step outside my scope of practice and delve into how and why we learn healthy anger and why mine got stunted or lost years ago.

I'll share my experience of being a health coach. And what it's taught me about who I was, who I am and how having healthy anger helps me be a good person and help make a real difference in this world. Hopefully it will help you or someone else who is struggling with anger in some way for some reason but desperately wanting to make a positive impact on the world and you can't quite see how to get there. How can they coexist? I get it. I see you. I FEEL you. 

Before I became a health coach, I was an angry person. I felt slighted and took a lot personally. This came from living in the world as a victim, in many ways. It's ironic because the success I achieved certainly came from confidence and courage I possessed but I've learned to see how and why that was possible.

See, the times when I was in my courage and confidence, I didn't focus on being angry. I didn't see threats, I saw opportunities. I didn't see loss, I saw my GOALS. That's how I was successful.

The times where I focused on the opposite, I lost time and energy being in a pity party.

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself because I see that now but it wasn't always like that. I didn't know it was happening like that as it was happening. But the suffering I experienced in my darker moments, the anger moments, prompted my interest in self-help. I think I read my first self-help book, maybe something by Deepak Chopra, before I even entered high school. 

Yes, I've been in the "game" that long.

And here I am, about to turn 39, and still learning lessons about anger and forgiveness. If that doesn't inspire you to get started asap, I don't know what will! There's a lot to learn and practice!

Back to my path. So I kept reading and practicing as best I understood things and saw them. I took cues from mentors along the way and gradually made progress. I started to see patterns in my work relationships and personal relationships and went to therapy to try to not make the same mistakes too many times in a row. 

In 2009, I graduated from an incredible life-changing health coaching program a drastically different person than the version who entered. I was ON FIRE! I was let go from my job on terms that still sting to this day but I kept going. I took it as a sign to hit the ground running and I did. I did all the things and grew my clientele and life seemed to open up and expand before me as my dreams of being self-made came true. 

I had a nagging feeling about the relationship I was in and the growing estrangement from my family but for the most part, I was good. 

Ha. And then in 2011, I decided to transition my gender identity. And the bottom dropped out of my life.

The person I lived with ultimately decided she wasn't up for the challenge of the transition process or being with me at all. My family stopped speaking to me and acknowledging my existence.

Both of those experiences made me incredibly angry. But I never stopped to let it really sink in. I never stopped to let it affect my progress. I put my head down and tried to be stoic and take it as part of the process. I just kept going.

As people began to focus more on my gender identity and transition process, which I shared openly as part of modeling how to make healthy identity changes in one's life, I grew more frustrated. I kept trying harder to share more in an attempt to make explicit the point about my identity being one of many changes I've made in my life. But the harder I tried, the more people seemed to care only about my gender identity and transition process.

It made me really angry. Over time, I lost patience as I saw through motivations that I'd not anticipated.

I think some people liked being able to say they had a transgender friend.

I think some people wanted an inside scoop about the stuff they saw on tv.

I think some people just wanted to know how to support me. 

But because I hadn't given myself time or space to be really angry about the consequences of my decision and the choices some people made, I didn't even know how to allow that support. I pushed it aside and tried to make it better for other people instead. I kept being positive and supportive and threw myself into more and more work to avoid that pain that revealed itself by the day.

The changes that happened without my permission from a decision that was supposed to make my life better.

As the years went by, I heard myself saying that it was harder and harder to remember being happy. It was harder to remember why I had made the decision to begin with. Eventually, it was harder to remember why I wanted to be alive.

For as much as I tried to cover over it, intentionally or subconsciously, that anger has come through in fits and starts in my work these past few years. I'm not blind to that. It's quite vulnerable to have done this whole thing in front of the entire damn world (or the small corner of the population who follow me). There are days I wish I could have taken a few years off and come back later as the "new me". Guess who could have made that decision? Yeah, me.

That's how I learned to have healthy anger. I learned to see my responsibility in whatever happens in my life. I learned to be accountable for it. I learned the fine line between guilt and mature acceptance. I learned how to observe anger, discern the source, and determine the solution.

As I let the anger come up, and give it room to breathe, it dissipates. That's how great life is.

That's how I allow all the feels about Donald Trump and his administration but don't lose precious sleep at night. I have too much to do and accomplish to make this world a better place and won't be stopped by my attachment to a different presidential election outcome. I also look at the long arc of history on this planet and thank him for the message he's bringing to our world. We thought we were so put together as a country, that we were being so welcoming and accepting and tolerant. HA! He's mirroring back to us our dirty corners in the bathroom and unresolved, nasty character flaws that we don't want to face.

That's my two cents on DJT.

Even the Dalai Lama says healthy anger is important for one's health and the benefit of others:

“there is definitely a concept of moral outrage against injustices. In the meditative cultivation of patience and forebearance, one may attend to a person who is engaging in some terribly vile behavior. As you cultivate patience for that person, you do not have any anger or hostility or aggression toward the person; rather, perhaps, compassion. But there is clearly an attitude”