This Silent Habit Might Be Sabotaging Your Career

You may be the last to know that you’re walking around with a giant chip on your shoulder. Meanwhile, your coworkers are giving you a wide berth.

The anger you carry around is glaringly obvious to them, and they perceive you as hostile, volatile, and someone to avoid. Coworkers may go along with you just to avoid conflict, but behind your back they’ve branded you as a keg of dynamite.

As a result, you’ll find it hard to recruit people to endorse your ideas or agree to collaborate with you on projects.

Perhaps you tend to escalate from zero to sixty whenever any frustration crops up. Or you quickly go over the redline and become irrational in reaction to a perceived injustice, insult, or wrongdoing.

In either case, it’s certain that, as a consequence, your performance tanks. You become agitated and can’t concentrate.

These oversized reactions to minor provocations that send you over the top don’t bode well if you’re hoping to stay with the company, let alone rise within it.

Here’s the important message:

Anger itself isn’t the problem. It’s the amount, the volume, the intensity of the anger. And it’s where, when, onto whom, and how it impacts you and others that can interfere with your career.

Many things can contribute to having a quick temper. But there are tools to use in helping you harness your anger. Among them, I advise starting with these:

1. Observe your thoughts

Start with heightening your self-awareness. Pay attention to yourself, how you feel, how you think, how you perceive others and yourself. Notice how people are responding to you.

Become aware of your tone of voice, your word choice, your use of profanity, and your non-verbal accompaniments to your speech, like your facial expressions?

Admittedly, it’s difficult, because, after all, you’re looking outwards at the world, and don’t have a mirror constantly offering your reflection.

But by seeking out feedback, even from yourself, you can improve your self-awareness, and in turn, give yourself the opportunity to improve.

Unless you can identify how you feel, you won’t be able to manage how you feel. The more aware you’re of your emotions, and the better you are at choosing how to act on them (or not), the more you can take command of unharnessed anger.

2. Understand the real problem

Anger itself isn’t the problem. It’s the intensity and how it impacts others. Pretty much everyone under the sun has had to struggle with anger.

It’s just that no one ever communicates that it’s okay to be angry, and it’s totally normal to call it what it is. Not only is it okay, it’s part of being human.

“Anger management” implies that anger is a problem and you have to get rid of it. But no one gets in trouble for being angry. People get in trouble for the stupid things they do when they’re angry.

The higher the level of anger, the harder it is to make good decisions, which makes you more likely to do things that are hurtful to people and yourself.

Think of anger as flame. When things are getting heated and you realize that your anger is escalating, remove yourself. Say that you’re getting another call or you have to go.

This allows you to take a step back and adjust the flame of your anger. Separate, rebalance, then re-engage.

3. Utilize “Hassle Logs.”

Hassle Logs are printable on index cards which can be thrown in your back pocket and filled out after a situation aggravates you. They ask the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of your dilemma.

By filling them out after the fact, even if you didn’t handle the conflict well, you start to pick up details and trends as to the circumstances of your difficulties.

Of course, filling out an index card doesn’t ensure that you’ll be an insightful person, but at least it will lead you to look at your role in an interaction, rather than just looking at the other parties’.

It’s the difference between looking for an external cause to an issue, versus seeing your role in it. Remember, when you have one finger pointing at someone else, the other fingers are usually pointing back at you.

Instead of letting anger boil over, you can learn to regulate your emotions and not just give into anger at the drop of a hat.

The better you are at being aware of your emotions and of choosing how to act on them (or not), the more personal power you command and transmit. And when it comes to your career, being able to harness your anger will take you far.