Cure your anger with empathy and self-awareness

Change your perspective
Say someone in another car cuts dangerously close to you as you are driving on the freeway. If your reflexive thought is “That son of a bitch!” it matters immensely for the trajectory of rage whether that thought is followed by more thoughts of outrage and revenge: “He could have hit me! That bastard—I can’t let him get away with that!” Contrast that sequence of building rage with a more charitable line of thought toward the driver who cut you off: “Maybe he didn’t see me, or maybe he had some good reason for driving so carelessly, such as a medical emergency.”

Step out of your anger loop
The longer you ruminate about what has made you angry, the more “good reasons” and self-justifications for being angry you can invent. Brooding fuels anger’s flames. But seeing things differently douses those flames. Reframing a situation more positively was one of the most potent ways to put anger to rest.

Try to rephrase the situation before you act on it
Anger can be completely short-circuited if the mitigating information comes before the anger is acted on.

Cool yourself down
Do relaxation methods such as deep breathing and muscle relaxation. Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan teacher’s advice on how to handle anger: “Don’t suppress it. But don’t act on it.”