Hi, I’m Roger Love, celebrity voice coach and author of the book Set Your Voice Free, and I get it. You’re mad. Somebody did something to somebody, to you, and it has made you mad, angry, and you don’t know how to get over it. Your stomach is tight. Your face is tight. Your blood pressure is boiling! You are angry, mad, out of control! How does that help you? It does not help you. What do you need to learn how to do? The fastest, best thing that you can do for yourself is to learn how to defuse your own anger, so that you can get past it as fast as possible, and then deal with whatever the situation is with rational non-anger from a beautiful place where you can actually solve problems.

But when you’re in the heat of that anger, it just seems impossible to slow that freight train down, because it’s going downhill at two hundred miles an hour. So, how do you do it? Let me give you some easy tips, because I promise you, the faster you learn to go from anger to happy is the better your life is going to be from moment to moment, day to day, year to year, and you’ll have a lifetime of happy instead of a lifetime of anger.
First thing to think about—when you get angry, your voice gets louder! Stop getting louder! You’re like, “Roger, how?” Stop getting louder! You could still be as angry as you want, but instantly pull the volume back. Just stop getting louder. Instantly, when you start to get mad, think, “Roger said to talk softer,” and that will help.

Number two, when you get angry, you take all the melody out of your voice, so you might be talking like this, “Oh, chocolate? I love chocolate.” And then, somebody ate your Easter egg, and then, suddenly, you’re one note on the piano. “Who ate my Easter egg? That Easter egg I was saving. I ate one bite a day thirty-two days in a row. That Easter egg was going to last me a month! Who ate it?” Everything becomes one note, so when you get angry, immediately tell yourself, “Boom! Softer. Boom! I’ve got to put the melody back in my voice, which means I’ve got to have some high notes and some low notes.” So, you’re using ascending melodies, melodies that go from low to high. “Someone took my Easter egg. Could it have been my brother? I really wish he wouldn’t have taken my Easter egg.” Just putting those melodies back in that go from low to high, ascending melodies, you’re going to be surprised how that totally changes your state, and it makes you think it’s almost funny in that second.

So, number one, you stop the volume. Number two, you add in melody. More specifically, you add in ascending melody. Number three, when you get angry, you’re going to realize that your stomach is super tight and motionless. So, what happens when your stomach is super tight and motionless? You’re holding your breath. When you hold your breath, the body goes into a bit of a state of shock, a little bit of a panic, like, “Oh, my God, you’re not going to breathe anymore, and you’re going to die!” So, there’s a little bit of a panic that sets in when you hold your breath. You don’t realize that you’re holding your breath, because you’re too angry, but if you weren’t so angry, you’d realize you were holding your stomach tight like rocks, so the brain is thinking, “Uh-oh, no air, no oxygen—we’re in trouble!”

All you need to do is, when you get angry, let your stomach start to come in. I always talk about diaphragmatic breathing, and you might as well learn it now, breathing in through your nose, pretending you have a balloon in your tummy. You fill up that balloon with air, and then, when you speak, your stomach comes back in. That’s called diaphragmatic breathing, and you can learn how to do that. But even if you don’t want to spend too much time on that, just tell yourself, “Boom! Let your stomach come back in.” Don’t keep your stomach stationary, because if you’re angry, and you let your stomach come back in, you increase blood flow. Now, all of a sudden, there is oxygen coming out of your lungs, heading towards your throat, and your brain doesn’t think you’re choking anymore. The brain doesn’t think you’re dying anymore. The brain suddenly gets oxygen.

So, what have I taught you so far? Boom! When you get angry, pull the volume back. When you get angry, add in melodies. When you get angry, let your stomach fall back into its normal position without being so tight. If you follow those three rules, you will almost immediately not sound angry anymore. When you start to hear yourself using melody, when you start to hear your volume come back down, when you start to feel the air coming through instead of holding your breath, you will actually sound less angry to yourself, which will calm you down even more. And even more importantly, you will sound less angry to the other people that you happen to be shouting and screaming out with no melody. So, you’ll sound better to yourself. You will sound better to them. And in seconds, not minutes, not hours, in seconds, by following these three very simple rules, you will be able to defuse your own anger in less than seven or ten seconds max, and you’ll be back on to living a happy life, having communications with people that don’t think you’re a crazy lunatic who is always flying off the handle and being made. Be happy. Lose the anger. You can do it.