This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Laws Of Human Nature" by Robert Greene. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How can you work on your management of aggressive behavior? Are there ways to work on your aggression?
Management of aggressive behavior is important. If you have aggressive tendencies, you will want to make sure you learn how to manage and control them.
Keep reading to find out more about management of aggressive behavior.
Management of Aggressive Behavior
Most people have medium-to-high levels of aggression, and these need to be expressed somehow. There are three ways you can choose to handle it and work on management of aggressive behavior. The third one is most viable:
Strategy #1: Repress and Control Aggression
Some people are so uncomfortable with their aggression—it seems shameful, risky, and unlikeable—that they try to repress it. As we’ve learned, though, masking an emotion doesn’t get rid of it; it simply relegates it to the Shadow and doesn’t help management of aggressive behavior.
Repressed aggression leads to the formation of an “internal saboteur,” which is an entity that directs your aggression towards yourself. It tries to create control by reducing you so there’s less unpredictability in your life. It judges you, reminds you how easy it is to fail, and dulls your other emotions because they could open you to criticism. You become too scared to try anything new.
Strategy #2: Use It to Develop Skills That Give You Control
When you were a child, your aggression made you adventurous—you wanted to explore, both mentally and physically. You can still use your aggression to learn as an adult by developing:
- Professional skills. Having skills helps you feel more in control (and therefore less aggressive) about your job and financial future.
- Social skills. These help you influence others, which gives you control over them.
- Hobbies. These help you satisfy the need for excitement, which you might otherwise get through aggression.
Skill development has limits when it comes to siphoning off aggression—it takes time and you have to learn to manage how to control your aggression well enough to attend work, social events, or classes or lessons.
Strategy #3: Translate Aggression Into More Productive Emotions
The existence of aggression isn’t a problem; the difficulty is how to direct that aggression towards something positive and use it for management of aggressive behavior. There are four more productive emotions we can channel our aggressive energy towards:
1. Rage. Rage has some negative connotations, but in fact, anger can be motivating and healthy if you know how to control your aggression. Anger is only negative when it’s unrelated to reality—for example, it’s directed at a scapegoat, fueled by a conspiracy, or masking failures. If your anger is specifically aimed at something and justified, you can use it to take down a target. It can give you fuel for a fight rather than an outburst.
2. Ambition. Like rage, ambition has a negative connotation. However, the connotation stems from enviers who dislike it when other people accomplish things. (In fact, attempting to appear unambitious is an ambition.)
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Robert Greene's "The Laws Of Human Nature" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full The Laws Of Human Nature summary :
- Why it's in your nature to self-sabotage
- How you behave differently when you're in a group
- Why you're wired to want the wrong things in life
