The Secret Wisdom of the Hula Hoop: Reducing Anger and Frustration

Anger

Aug 4

There are tons of click-baity articles in the world with weird promises:

The One Weird Trick That Reduces Stubborn Belly Fat
Get Rich Today: The Government Doesn’t Want You To Know About This Trick
How I Enlarged My Penis by 5 Inches By Eating Only Canned Tuna and Mayonnaise

I get it - you’re probably have an internal click-bait sensor, and this article’s title is very click-baity.

But here’s the deal - the metaphor that I’m about to share about hula hoops and mental health is one of the best ways I know to help men let go of anger and frustration that’s not theirs to carry. It helps men to understand and let go key sources of anger and frustration that have plagued them for years.

Here we go:

Standing In the Hula Hoop

Imagine yourself, wherever you are reading this right now, standing in the middle of a hula hoop that has been placed on the floor in front of you.

As you imagine yourself standing in that hula hoop, think of the plastic ring that is encircling you as a kind of impenetrable demarcation dividing all of reality, all of the world into two fundamental basic groups:

Everything that is INSIDE of the hula hoop (like you)
Everything that is OUTSIDE of the hula hoop (everything not you)

Again, we’re simplifying all of reality into things inside, and things outside of the hula hoop. Next, I want to you start naming all the things that are OUTSIDE your ability to control in your life, and placing those OUTSIDE of your hula hoop.

You might name things like:

The price of gasoline
The global economy
Other people’s reactions and feelings towards me
What events have occurred in the past

Now, start naming and all of the things that are INSIDE your ability to influence and change in your life, and placing those INSIDE your hula hoop with you.

You may name things like:

My own actions in response to events outside the hula hoop
How I respond when people outside the hula hoop interact with me
My understanding of past events
Where and how I move my body and what I put into my body
Who I talk to

Releasing Anger and Frustration

One of the things we quickly notice in this exercise is that there are usually A LOT of things OUTSIDE of our hula hoop that make us angry and frustrated.

The actions of that person that you work with may really make your blood boil. But the truth is, you really can not control their thoughts, actions, feelings, or behaviors. That is outside of your hula hoop.

The more that you continue to try to control things that are outside of the hula hoop, the more you are going to find yourself frustrated.

Releasing anger and frustration means being able to shift your attention and focus from things outside of the hula hoop towards things inside of the hula hoop that you can address.

You can work on understanding the emotions arising within you when that person at work gets under your skin. You can work on gaining clarity on the kinds of responses to their behavior that feel most empowering and productive for you.

That is where your real work lies.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about others or are indifferent to their suffering because they are outside of our hula hoop - remember, within our hula hoop we can work on our behaviors and emotions and understandings of things, and our own actions…but we can’t control how those elements are received outside of the hula hoop.

Solving world poverty, for example, is outside of your hula hoop. But here are things that are inside your hula hoop:

Accessing a sense of compassion for the suffering of others and yourself
What you choose to do with the financial resources you have been given (which can include donations to causes that support poverty relief)
The kinds of things you communicate to others (which could include advocacy for those in poverty)
Accessing a sense of compassion and connection to those who are unable to access their own compassion for those suffering the way that you have been able to.

You can take all of those actions that are inside of your hula hoop, and they do affect and interact with the world outside the hula hoop. But you certainly can not control the world outside of the hula hoop. The more you try to do that, the more frustrated you are going to become.

As you shift towards focusing on what is inside of the hula hoop, you can discover a whole lifetime of rich work to engage in that will feel empowering and productive.

Here’s the sad truth though - too many men spend years of their life angry and frustrated because they try to control what is outside of their hula hoop. They may even go to therapy, but be unable to make that important shift towards addressing the things that are inside the hula hoop, and wonder why it seems like nothing is changing. I don’t want that for you.

My hope is that you will be able to make the shift towards focusing on what is within your hula hoop, and discover a whole lifetime of rewarding and powerful work.

Wishing you the best on your mental health journey.