Anger: Can it Ever be Beneficial?

Anger: Can it Ever be Beneficial?

To answer this we need to know what anger is, the different types of anger, recognize anger in our mind, see the harm that it is causing us and then we can see for ourself if there is any benefit. Let’s see what conclusion we come to by exploring the facts.

What is anger?

Anger is a delusion that arises from focusing on an animate or inanimate object, a

person, including ourself or inanimate objects such as the weather, or losing a tennis

match, considers them to be undesirable, exaggerates its bad qualities and wishes

to harm it. We can see that it takes many mental mistakes to get angry.

A lot of circumstances trigger anger in us, such as when:

•  ·      We exaggerate faults in others
• ·        Our wishes are frustrated and we don’t get what we want
• ·        We hold unrealistic views and beliefs
• ·        We are confused
• ·        We focus our mind on someone harming us
• ·        We have to put up with something we would rather avoid

Anger develops from the potential to get angry (seed of anger) that we have in our mind. When we meet someone or something that gives rise to an unpleasant feeling, we naturally develop aversion for it and wish to be separated from it. We mistakenly think that the unpleasant feeling is caused by the other person, when feeling is a part of our mind. What we feel depends upon our mind. The more familiar we are with getting angry, the easier it is to get angry. The tendency to repeat is a major characteristic of our mind. Another cause of our anger is imitating those with whom we associate; if they get angry regularly, it will be easier for us to get angry. It is important to choose friends that are a good influence on us. Bad habits of body, speech or mind will make it easier to get angry more often.

It is important to recognize anger in our mind. We all have the seed of anger, the potential to develop anger, so unless we are very well trained, we do get angry. It is quite easy to see our big anger, but maybe we don’t recognize our more subtle anger. Also, we can repress our anger and have no idea that we are getting angry at all. This would occur because we are highly motivated not to see that we get angry, which can come from thinking: anger is bad; only bad people get angry; being attached to seeing ourself as a good person; and good people don’t get angry.

We need to see anger functioning in our own mind and if we are paying close attention we will always notice how horrible it feels. If we know how anger develops and see it in our experience directly, then it will be easy to stop it before it develops.

 Anger has many faults  here are just a few examples:

•  ·      When we are angry, we are not aware of anything else so we can’t learn anything and we make terrible decisions
• ·      It leads to destructive actions and harsh language
• ·      Our wisdom declines and we cannot discriminate right from wrong
• ·      It destroys our positive minds.
• ·      Our tendency to get angry increases (becomes more familiar), which makes positive minds less familiar
• ·      Its only function is to cause us harm. It is the most destructive of all delusions
• ·      It destroys our joy of tennis which could lead to quitting tennis

·          It makes us tired physically and mentally

It is easy to see how all these faults can not help our tennis

Vision – What we are working towards

Our goal is to continually keep the ideal state of mind to play our best tennis. This is a calm, clear, positive state of mind that is always focused only on what we need to do on the court to play our best. This conjoined with a strong wish to win or play our best is the ideal state of mind.  A clear mind is a mind that is free from negativity or any distractive thoughts. With this state of mind, if our body is all right, we will naturally play our best all the time.

Solutions to anger

We have the potential to be anger free. To do this we first need to recognize the anger in our mind, know its faults and apply its opponent, patience. A trained, controlled mind is a free mind. An untrained mind easily goes to negativity and is not free. We can stay happy in any situation, and our happiness does not depend upon having favourable external conditions.

We need to contemplate the faults of anger so we will develop a strong intention to stop our anger when it arises and apply a method to overcome it. If we had something dangerous in our house we would get it out right away. We have something much more dangerous in our mind.

The opponent to anger is patience. Patience is a mind that can happily accept any situation that arises, by giving up on the idea that things should be a certain way. For example, it is normal for things not to go the way we want, thinking realistically in this way it is easier to stay patient when things don’t go the way we want. Patience is not forcing our way through a situation with a disturbed mind. It is a happy mind that sees things realistically. Most of our emotional problems are nothing more than not accepting things as they are – patient acceptance is the solution, not trying to change external situations. Patience is not passive; it is standing up to our delusions and taking control through taking a strong stance. There is nothing strong or courageous about reacting to difficult people and situations with anger – we are just being defeated by our delusions.

We need to be mindful throughout the day, watching our mind for delusions, negative beliefs, and inappropriate attention. We need to stop inappropriate attention and apply opponents as soon as possible. We can specifically remember and think of more faults of anger, which will increase our wish to eliminate it. Then, when we are on the tennis court our tendency to get angry will lessen and lessen.

We get angry at others, or in situations, because we focus on their faults and exaggerate them. To overcome this we can focus on others good qualities or think “how wonderful it is that I live in a great country and have the freedom to play tennis”, etc., or anything that makes it easy to stay happy and not get angry.

We need to understand that we can deal with any situation better if we have a calm mind. Think of any extreme situation, like a mixed martial artist competing or a fireman in a burning building, they are going to be more aware of their surroundings and make better decisions if they are calm.

Everything that is worthwhile is difficult at first, but becomes easier with practice and familiarity.

Removing Mental Obstructions to Playing our Best Tennis

To have the ideal mental conditions to play our best tennis we have to train our mind regularly and correctly. Training our mind entails lessening and eradicating negative minds, increasing our positive minds and improving our mental capabilities like concentration. When we start getting results from this training everything in our life becomes better.

The final goal of mind training in tennis is a calm, clear, positive and stable mind, free from any disturbance. To accomplish this we need to understand our mind and how it functions. There is nothing more important to do. When we get our mind right, then the external things in our life will be right. In tennis we will make better decisions, and know more clearly: how much tennis to play; what to practice; how to practice; how much and what types of exercises to do; who to have as a coach; what therapist to see; who to rely upon for advice; how to learn; who to have in our circle of friends; our strategy in matches; and so on, in order to become the best tennis player we can be.

 The goal is being calm not just looking calm or pretending to be calm. We can’t act differently from what we really believe; all we can do is fake it, while our mind stays disturbed. When we change our beliefs and views of situations it changes our reality. Our beliefs about our tennis determine our state of mind while playing.

When our mind is calm, clear and positive we are in the best position to:

• ·      Learn from everything
• ·      Better understand all that is going on around us
• ·      Change to a winning strategy
• ·      Come up with many creative solutions to any difficulties

Our main obstruction

The cause of all our problems stem from the mind of self-cherishing. Self-cherishing is a mental attitude that considers oneself to be supremely important and precious. Because of this mind when things don’t go our way we get disturbed. If we have strong self-cherishing we get very disturbed. We always have this mind to some degree so we constantly suffer from anxiety, fear, and unhappiness. For example, if we are very afraid of losing during a match, we have strong self-cherishing and our mind is very agitated. Self-cherishing is our real enemy not our opponent on the tennis court.

With self-cherishing we pay inappropriate attention and other delusions such as attachment, deluded pride and anger arise. Attachment is a mind that observes an object that appears to be pleasant and a cause of happiness and wishes to possess it. It is a delusion because happiness comes from the mind not from external objects. When we are attached to something our mind is disturbed which is the hallmark of a delusion being present. When anything gets in the way of getting what we want (like winning a tennis match) or we don’t get what we want (like losing a tennis match) we become more disturbed.

Self-cherishing has many faults and disadvantages. What you can do is look at everything that disturbs you and it can always be traced back to self-cherishing being the cause.

The solutions: from sitting quietly to playing a big match

While sitting quietly we can think of what bothers us the most when we are playing tennis? What do we wish was different when we play tennis? Let’s say it is our attachment to winning. What does this mean and how does it destroy our peace of mind and therefore our tennis game?

Wanting to win a tennis match is not a problem. Trying our hardest to win a tennis match is not a problem. What is a problem is being attached to winning a tennis match. This means we think winning a tennis match is a cause of happiness. This is a mistaken mind, a delusion that is discriminating incorrectly the cause of our happiness, which comes from our mind. The moment we make this mistake we experience an unpleasant feeling, our body tightens up, and our mind becomes focused on: not losing; not missing; and many other thoughts that disturb our mind. This turns the mind away from our primary focus. Physically we become weaker, we lose accuracy and power, and we get tired faster.

Seeing in our experience how attachment hurts our tennis game, we think about these faults of attachment and our attachment will weaken and not have the same power to harm us any more. By contemplating these faults, we will rely upon this faulty mind less and less.

An exercise we can do is to sit quietly and imagine we are playing an important match, and the score is close, in the second or third set. Or we can just remember a situation when we were afraid of losing a match. Then we watch our mind to see precisely what we are saying to ourself. From this we can see what beliefs we have about winning and see exactly what we are attached to. When we see this, it will be easy to stop the delusion, because it will be obvious to us the mistake we have been making. We can also pay attention to how our body is tightening up. The more faults of attachment we find and become familiar with, the weaker it will become.

The mind of attachment, like all delusions, is unrealistic. By becoming more realistic, our delusions will lessen. A few examples of being realistic that are beneficial include: understanding the reality that we will lose a lot of tennis matches throughout our life; we will have match points and lose some times; things will never quite go the way we want; some days we won’t play as well as others; we will lose to someone nobody would ever think we would lose to, etc. It is more important to focus on learning all the time and doing whatever we can to keep improving.

As a mind trainer, I lead people to know their own mind. For example, what beliefs and attitudes they have, and the harm the negative ones are causing, so they can stop relying upon them. We will keep relying upon something, no matter how harmful it is, until we realize it is not producing the results we want.

On the tennis court we can watch for attachment arising in different ways – we are attached to many things. If we are busy thinking about things we don’t have much awareness of what is going on around us, let alone about our mind. We must always watch for self- cherishing and see how it is screwing everything up for us and develop a strong motivation to eliminate it. Through being aware of our mind while playing, we will see what our biggest obstruction is, and deal with that one first because it will have the biggest impact on our game.

When we notice we are getting tight, this unpleasant feeling reminds us that we have a delusion in our mind. If there is a delusion in our mind, we know we are paying inappropriate attention to something. If we stop the inappropriate attention, the delusion stops, the tightness in our body stops, and we can therefore play better.

In creating all the best internal and external conditions to play our best, we also need to get rid of what doesn’t work. We need to check everything we are doing and see if it is bringing us the results we want. Important things may seem difficult at first, but then become easier with practice and through familiarity. Good luck.

How to Create the best Mental Conditions to play our best Tennis

To have the ideal mental conditions to play our best tennis we have to train our mind regularly and correctly. We might think that the top players in the world have better minds than other players, but we probably just have a vague idea of what that means. It is true that, mostly they have less negative minds functioning and therefore, in general, they can: stay better focused; won’t give up; and are more relaxed in big points, while they are playing a tennis match. However, this is occurring naturally and not through a deliberate Training of the mind. Their minds are very weak and negative compared to people who really understand the importance of training their minds. If you have a strong mind that is always positive and free from any negativity, you will have a huge advantage over any opponent.

I believe it is more important to train our mind correctly than to train our body, but we need to do both. Up until now the focus has been primarily physical training. Our mind’s potential is limitless, and right now the good news is that it is very limited, so we have a lot of room for improvement. Our tennis game can become so much better when we train our mind with the intention of changing it in a positive way.

Our mind determines: (a brief list)

• ·       Our motivation
• ·       How we learn
• ·       If we make correct decisions / do the right thing
• ·       Concentration
• ·       Consistency
• ·       Persistency
• ·       Our habits and tendencies
• ·       How good we will be
• ·       Our confidence and self-esteem
• ·       How smart we are / how much wisdom we have
• ·       How happy, calm, relaxed, scared, nervous, patient we are

If we understand the mind deeply, we will see that it actually determines everything. If you look at just the short list above and think of how those things affect everything you do, you will start to get an idea of how important this is.

In watching many tournaments every year, such as, the Under 18 Indoor Junior Nationals, and many Futures tournaments, as well as, watching the senior tournament players I compete with internationally, I see many tennis players that are not happy and have very little control over their minds.

To know for oneself what the best mental conditions are, we need to understand more about what the mind is. We want to be in control of our mind on the tennis court. We want to be able to stay focused for as long as any match will take. We want to try our hardest every point and never give up. In order to do this, we need to understand the nature and functions of our mind. We might think we know our mind because we know what state our mind is in right now and whether it is happy or sad. If someone were to ask us what the mind is would we be able to answer clearly what the precise nature of our mind is and how it functions. If not then we can say we don’t have a clear understanding of our mind. Only through knowing our mind does it become possible to change in many significant ways.

So what is the best state of mind to play our best tennis? It is a calm, clear, positive, stable mind, free from any disturbances. Not only is this possible, but it is a must to perform our best at anything we are doing. If we check, any condition in our mind that is different from this makes our game worse. We will start to explore this topic in this article and in more depth in future articles.

A clear vision of the final result we want

Our vision only needs to be clear enough that if we saw it we would recognize it. It is what we really want, not what others want, or want for us, or think we should want. If we don’t really want something we will not put the effort into attaining it for years, to bring our vision into reality. We must not limit our vision thinking maybe I can’t accomplish it; I am not good enough, etc. The bigger our vision is, the more energy it will bring us to accomplish it. Our vision for our mind, related to our tennis, is how we ideally want our mind to be while we are playing.

Here are some of the things we can accomplish through training our mind

• ·      Understand our mental mistakes so well that we never make them again
• ·      Lessen and eradicate all our negative minds
• ·      Increase fully our positive minds
• ·      Fully develop capabilities of our mind, such as concentration.
• ·      Enjoy tennis more by changing our views of: our self; other people; and situations
• ·      Stay happy (a calm, clear, positive mind free from any disturbance) during practice and matches, including situations that used to bother us
• ·      Stay highly motivated to accomplish what we want
• ·      Be confident and have strong self esteem; have control of our mind; stay focused with a clear  mind; learn from everything and therefore improve quickly

Our current reality in relation to our vision

Knowing our current reality correctly is usually quite difficult, because there are certain things we don’t want to know about ourself. Also, we are often unrealistic about our abilities, thinking we are either better or worse than how we actually are. To look at where we are currently in a specific area of our life we need to: not judge what we are looking at; get rid of the labels ‘‘good” and “bad”; just look at what is, not a commentary about it, not what we think about it, just the facts. The more realistic we are about our current situation, the faster we will move towards our vision.

What are the obstructions in our mind now that are limiting our tennis? Our main obstructions are delusions. Delusions are distorted ways of looking at ourself, other people and the world around us. They arise from inappropriate attention, which focuses on an object that disturbs our mind, keeps focusing on it and exaggerates its apparent qualities. The function of delusions is to make our mind unpeaceful and uncontrolled. They are our actual enemy, not our opponent, the weather, losing, the courts, our strings and all the other things we may normally blame for our unhappiness.

We also have to get rid of: bad habits of body, speech and mind; negative core beliefs; being influenced by others who are negative; and being unrealistic.

How to lessen delusions and increase positive minds to play our best

Through a greater and greater understanding of our mind, it becomes more evident what we need to do. We need to know what to eliminate in our mind and what we need to accomplish. We need to see what is actually functioning in our mind, not what we hope is functioning. When we see directly what is actually disturbing our mind, a delusion, it is easy to stop the delusion temporarily. When there is a delusion functioning in our mind we can’t just think positively. Our negative thinking and our harmful beliefs are strong habits and our mind is so familiar with them that they automatically operate in particular situations. So we have to weaken and eliminate them, and at the same time become more familiar with a positive alternative.

We need to become more aware of what is going on in our mind. In order to do this we need an intellectual understanding of the types of mind and learn how to watch our mind once we know what to look for.

As a mind trainer I lead people to getting in touch with what is actually functioning in their mind. We can go deeper and deeper till we get to the root of a specific problem. With this level of understanding it is easy to eliminate the problem.

Through meditation we can familiarize our mind with positive thoughts and we can train in remembering them throughout the day.

In the next article we will look specifically at what our mental obstructions have to do with tennis, and how to lessen and eradicate them. We will look at a specific example.