Sun Tzu's guide to controlling your anger

"Anger can return to happiness. Resentment can return to content."
- Sun Tzu

If there were a list of emotions to describe how many people feel in today's world, anger would probably be near the top of the list. Everyone feels angry - angry at the government, at the opposing political party, at greedy corporations, at our neighbors, at our bosses or coworkers, at our spouses, at life in general.

Even more, we all tend to feel justified in feeling angry. We all feel justified in cursing the person who cuts us off or yelling at the "idiot" online who spouts something "ignorant" in the comments section. We all feel like the world is crazy or unjust and we're the only sane or moral ones.

For Sun Tzu, however, no emotion is more destructive to acquiring a sense of peace and security (what he calls an) than anger. In war, anger makes us act rashly, put ourselves and others at risk, and ultimately undermine what we are trying to accomplish.

But just what is anger? Why is it so dangerous? And what can we learn from The Art of War in trying to control our anger so that we can cultivate stillness and calm in our lives? The following are three lessons I've learnt from Sun Tzu on controlling my anger:

1. Understand the source of your anger. Understand what anger is and deep, emotional need it stems from inside you.
2. Shift your values. Move away from the idea that you have to take revenge on the person that causes your anger. Focus instead on what you will actually gain from (not) taking a certain action.
3. Make controlling your anger a game. Reward yourself on your ability to control your anger. View this ability as an essential skill in achieving happiness and success in life, with showing compassion for people who irritate or bother you as the ultimate sign of this skill.

​Let's view each lesson in depth.

Lesson 1: Understand the source of your anger
The first step to controlling one's anger is to understand what it is and where it comes from.

Truth is, anger is a difficult emotion to define. Everyone knows what anger looks like - yelling, cursing, insulting, violent outbursts, rage. But this is simply how anger manifests itself. Something deeper is going on.

Quite simply, anger is an emotion that occurs when something doesn't go the way we believe it should go, or want or "need" it to go. It is our emotional reaction to when someone or something violates an underlying belief we have about how the world should or needs to operate world.

All anger betrays a hidden ideal - one we are emotionally invested in and feel the world should conform to. When you get angry, for example, at someone cutting you off in traffic, your reaction betrays an underlying belief in a standard of behavior on the road where people should drive respectfully and safely, not carelessly or selfishly.

Thus, anger is usually tied to a feeling of justice. We feel justified in showing our displeasure at others (honking, giving the finger, yelling, etc.) - to make them feel discomfort or even pain at having violated our ideal.

Even deeper, though, is what a person or thing's violation of our ideal means to us, on a deep, albeit unconscious level. The ideals we hold about how the world should operate usually relate to our emotional wants and needs - whether we are conscious of this or not. Thus, someone violating our ideals demonstrates, to us, a lack of care for - or even a refusal to care for - our emotional wants and needs.

So, for example, our angry response at someone cutting us off in traffic reveals an emotional need for respect. Our angry response at an opposing political party reveals our need to be considered and recognized. Our angry response at losing a game reveals our underlying need to win, to conquer, to be seen as the best.

Thus, if you want to control your anger, the first thing to do is understand what's the source of your anger. Ask yourself:

• What are the situations that tend to get me angry? Why?
• What standard or expectation do I have that gets me angry when someone or something violates it?
• What does this standard or expectation reveal about my own emotional needs?

Write your response down and take some time to reflect and see if it rings true. For myself, I tend to get angry when I feel people question or insult my intelligence (e.g. with sarcasm). This reveals a deep emotional need to have people recognize my intelligence, how smart I am.

Going through these questions won't get rid of your anger, but it puts distance between you and your anger, giving you more power over it. 

Lesson 2: Shift your values
For Sun Tzu, anger is dangerous for two reasons:

1. Anger betrays an underlying difficulty with accepting reality. When you are angry, you are literally struggling with accepting the fact that someone cut you off or forgot to call you back or ignored you, etc. Behind every instance of anger is disbelief. Staying too long in anger only extends this difficulty with accepting things as they are, thus not allowing us to adapt to the actual reality we are facing. In war, this is very dangerous, as anger can cloud our understanding and lead us to make rash or faulty decision-making, rising lives and the security of the nation.
2. Anger leads you towards destructive behavior. Anger always tends to make us more aggressive, more violent, more vengeful, more willing to dole out insult or pain. For Sun Tzu, the general's aim is not to destroy the enemy - that takes up precious resources. Rather, the aim is to win without battle, making the nation stronger and more secure than it was before the conflict. Sometimes this requires making peace with one's enemy, reducing any tensions or animosity. Acting from anger, however, undermines this; doing it will only intensify the tension, not de-escalate it.

Given this, there are two questions we need to ask ourselves: How do I stop myself from getting angry? And if I do get angry, how do I stop myself from acting from anger?

For Sun Tzu, preventing yourself from getting angry requires shifting your values. The reason why we indulge anger, letting it boil until we react, is because we value revenge or aggression in the face of someone violating our standards or expectations. We feel justified in taking action against someone.

The problem is that taking revenge does very little to make you stronger, better, or more secure later. This is the value you need to focus on and cultivate in your daily life: making gains. As Sun Tzu tells us, "Killing the enemy is a matter of anger. Taking the enemy's advantages is a matter of profit."

For Sun Tzu, the wise general doesn't value death or destruction, but profit and security. He isn't focused on how to get the enemy back or whether the enemy's situation is worse. Rather, he focuses on whether he and his army have made or can make any gains. He asks: Are we stronger? Is our position more secure? Are we in a better position to attack and win? Do we have a greater advantage over the enemy?

Sun Tzu gives us a simple rule:

"If there is no advantage, do not move. If there is nothing to gain, do not mobilize. If there is no danger, do not battle."

The wise general never acts from anger, but only from profit - the ability to actually gain advantage or make progress.

In your own life, you must ask yourself continually: Am I getting better? Am I getting smarter? Am I more confident? Will taking this action give me greater or lesser peace or security?

The more you think from the perspective of making gains, the harder it will be to stay angry or get angry in the first place. You'll realize that getting angry will gain you nothing, even if it means hurting whoever got you upset. The enemy losing doesn't mean anything. What matters is only if you have gained something - something positive, helpful, useful.

Lesson 3: Make controlling your anger a game
Of course, there will be times when you will get angry and you will be tempted to act from your anger. In these situations, Sun Tzu suggests making a game of your situation.

For Sun Tzu, one of the best ways to gain in war is by stealing the opponent's resources. Thus, he advises a general to create a system where the first unit to capture enemy soldiers or enemy weapons will get a reward. In addition, he advises the general to instruct his soldiers to value the enemy's food as if it were worth twenty times their own food.

You too can apply the same principle to your own life. In my own life, for example, one game I play is that I give myself a point if, when I am angry or irritated because of something someone says or does, I simply am able to keep my cool and not say anything in response. If I can leave that situation without arguing or saying something sarcastic, I get one point. I give myself two points if I can even be nice to person.

The ultimate test of your skill in controlling your anger is if you can cultivate compassion for those with whom you're angry. So one game, if you want to get better at this, is, when you're feeling angry or annoyed at someone, to try to see things from the other person's perspective or situation. Ask yourself: maybe this person had a bad day, or this person was not raised the same way, or this person is not trying to be malicious but just made an honest mistake. Or maybe - just maybe - this person may actually have a point, something to be considered.

In short, understanding the source of your anger, shifting your values and focus, and playing these kinds of anger control games are useful in getting you to shift away from revenge or violence and move towards Sun Tzu's ultimate goal - strength and security (an).