When we look at our “emotional map” we can see that the emotions we feel frequently, that are familiar to us, even if we don’t like them sometimes, is like a “map” of our emotional world.

If you are the kind of person that gets angry regularly, that tells you much about you. If you are often sad or melancholy, same thing. If you are basically a happy person, same thing.

However, often one emotion “masks” another, so we might walk around appearing, even believing, we are happy for example, but it might be hiding a deep sadness.

Clowns know this. Any truly great comedy has a tragedy at its root. Laugh or cry, those are our two choices when faced with life. Clowns get us to laugh about the pain in our lives. Look at Jim Carey’s movies, for example: The Truman Show. It is very funny, but the story is tragic. Laugh or cry.

So underneath it all, that emotional map, does it control us, or guide us out of our personal woods to fields of joy? So what emotions control you? What feelings do you avoid? Even avoiding emotion is a form of control, the emotion we seek when we do that is called “numbness”. It is often a blanket of emotional concrete covering a raging fire of emotions.

For better or worse, the only way  I’ve seen that works to really grow into the person you truly are, is to look within and loosen the knots of the heart. Emotions are not good or bad, they are our inner guidance system. It’s up to us to learn to use the tools Life has given us.

Anger is a very misunderstood emotion.  For very many people, the one emotion they have the most problems with is anger. The thing is just like chilis, there are lots of types of anger. Some anger is volatile and liable to break things: words, emotions even people.

There is slow boiling anger, like hot lava from a volcano. There is the anger that comes like a sudden storm and destroys whatever is in its path.

Then there is anger like acid rain, that slowly drop by drop eats away at us.

I’m sure you can come up with different anger types on your own.

The thing to remember about anger we are usually angry at something, because of something.

Think about it for a moment. Think back to when you were last angry. Weren’t you angry at a situation, person, perhaps yourself or another, an event? Wasn’t the anger about a value or belief you had that was challenged or broken? Either trust, expectation, self-esteem or something like that?

If you look beneath the surface of that anger, beyond the surface reason you were angry, was there another person you were angry with? Very often it’s us. When we are angry at others we are often angry at ourselves too. For being such a fool, for trusting that person, for believing them, or for the injustice of the situation. Whatever it is.

Anger is a fantastic tool then- it allows us to clearly without any doubt see what we feel about ourselves. We then know exactly what to clear, what hot buttons to release, what we truly believe about the world.

So next time you get angry, bless it, since it is guiding you to deepen and expand yourself. But only if you take action and learn the lessons anger wants to teach you. If you run away, you’ll just end up doing it again.

Okay, time to upset some applecarts here- I think most personal growth today has it the wrong way around. Or at least, the reason that most people seek personal growth programs.

Having upset some readers, let me explain why. Because often when we start our journey of personal growth we are looking for something extra, something we want to be, which we believe is “outside” us in some way.

Either it is something in our personality we want to add or remove, or it is an experience we wish to move away from or towards. Or even people we want to become or not be like.

This has it all arsy-versy or inside out. The truth is WE already are the very best in us, we’re simply not letting ourselves see it, feel it, believe it and even less be it.

The journey then is different, it is more a process of unlearning and releasing ideas and beliefs rather than adding new ones. of course, a few new techniques and skills help to learn to drop the old. That is what this site is dedicated to.