I like to think of anger as the normal human response to injustice. It’s the way we’re supposed to feel inside when something is unfair. It’s healthy, because it helps us to see what we can do to correct the injustice, and then it motivates us to do it. After we have taken action, the anger is supposed to go away, so we can forgive and relax and sleep like a baby.

Using anger this way I call staying in the fairway. It’s the way to make things fair. To go experience too little or too much anger is rough on us and others, so I call this going into the rough.

The rough on the left is too little anger, where nothing gets corrected. You just push the anger down into the subconscious where it eats you alive and becomes something like paranoia, insomnia or an ulcer. Or it may come out sideways as you snap at innocent loved ones, who naturally pull back from you.

The rough on the right is taking the law into your own hands, and using your anger to humiliate or get even with the unfair party. Mean or vengeful words or actions always come back to haunt us sooner or later. Getting even starts a long, downwardly spiraling chain of events that is likely to degrade all parties involved. The worst thing is that the injustice is never really identified or corrected, just added to.

Perhaps you’re in the rough right now about something. You have been for quite awhile, and you’re tired of it. You’re probably trying the best you know how to correct a loved one (or a hated one), and it’s not helping. Well here’s a little way to change your attitude and turn things around. It’s a prayer or meditation in four steps: REJOICE, RELEASE, HOPE, and HELP.

REJOICE: ask God (or your higher power) to have no mercy, and to just wear out your

enemy’s backside. "Make ____ so miserable they will feel the pain they have caused others." The positive purpose of this prayer is that it gets a lot of hatred out of your system, so it doesn’t get spoken or acted out on human beings who either don’t deserve it or won’t forgive you for it.

To get it off your chest, it really helps to believe there is a God who is big and personal enough take this anger. Jews and Christians have been encouraged to pray like this by Psalms 35 and 109. Once you feel a bit relieved of your hatred by sending it up toward the sky, you will be more ready for the second prayer.

RELEASE: Let God be God, and teach you the best solution for all concerned. "God, do

whatever you can to make things right. If you prefer a softer way to turn my enemy’s heart and life around, and to restore the love of life to me and my enemy’s other victims, do whatever you need to do." This begins to neutralize the acid that’s still in your stomach.

3. HOPE: this even more positive prayer turns neutralized acid into good will. Once you’ve said the release prayers hard and often enough, you will feel you mean it. Then you can pray, "Lord, if there’s a way for you to bring love, joy, peace, wisdom and true courage into my enemy’s heart, to turn that life around into a good life, help me imagine it. Help me want to help you make it happen."

4. HELP: this last step gets you back involved again in your enemy’s life, to help answer the prayer of step 3, and to correct the underlying cause for the injustice. If you spend enough time in the third prayer, you will be able to go to the last one: "God if there’s anything I can do to help you bring good things into this person’s life, please show me. Give me the ability, the desire and the opportunity to convey your blessing to this person." Wait for your sanctified imagination to show you what to do, how it will help, and to give you the desire to go ahead.

In conclusion, anger is an acid in your mind, heart and stomach that is meant to inspire action to dissolve injustice. This 4-step prayer gets you out of the rough of too much or too little anger, and focuses you on correcting the problem. I hope that your prayers of rejoicing, releasing, hoping and helping can get you, your anger and perhaps even your enemy out of the rough and back into the fairway.

The great majority of fights we’re fired up for just aren’t worth fighting. Recently I tried to get into an argument with a relative that was harshly criticizing my wife. She appreciated that I wanted to protect her, but she didn’t really need it. In fact she seemed amused at my efforts, and when I asked her later why, she said, "It was like watching you wrestle a pig. You both got dirty, and the pig loved it." So here’s ten steps for staying out of the mud when someone has hurt you deeply, or a nasty argument starts.

Stop talking. You don’t need to get into a mud-flinging contest.

Stop listening. Close your eyes to signal this, and take a deep breath to slow down.

Stop thinking, of what to say next, of how to get even, of how you look to others.

Walk away or turn away. Start taking a little time-out.

Rise above the situation. Pray you can see your enemy, yourself and your situation as

God does, for example, as two siblings fighting and breaking a piece of their father’s or mother’s heart.

Realize that life isn’t fair, and be thankful it isn’t. Maybe life has been a lot harder on

the person who’s putting you down than it has been for you. If you’d spent your life in her shoes, who knows that you might not be meaner than she in this situation. And who knows what she’s been through today, stuff that isn’t fair to her?

Remember some of the mean, selfish and dishonest stuff you’ve done in life, and how

many dear people have forgiven you for all this. Realize you can only keep feeling this forgiveness if you keep giving it away, to those like the enemy of the day, who doesn’t deserve forgiveness any more or less than you did. So,

Forgive whoever is making you angry. Resolve to avoid a silly war of revenge. Pray

some blessings down on them. Hope they can learn to relax and calm down.

Ask God/your conscience if you can help answer that prayer, and how. Imagine your

doing it, and that it will make a difference in the other person’s life somehow.

Do what you can to bless your enemy. Sometimes doing or saying anything,

especially something kind, will make matter worse for the moment. SO do it later when things have calmed down. Meanwhile,

Quit while you’re enemy thinks he’s ahead. This way he’s got no motive for

continuing to attack you. Holding your hands up to your shoulders facing out says you’re holding nothing against your enemy to throw at him later, and you’re backing off. He can think he won if he wants to. Walk away and don’t look back. To clear your mind, get busy doing "the next right thing."

Now none of this stuff about forgiveness says anything about TRUST, trusting other people not to hurt you again, trusting yourself to handle it better if they did. Trust has to be both earned and given.

They say that a life well lived is the best revenge. I wholeheartedly agree. To take the high road up and out of the pig pen is just plain smart, and darn good for your blood pressure.

I was teaching some of these things recently to a hot-headed client for whom I’m doing some "anger management." His language is generally, shall we say, colorful. He often feels like people are doing bodily functions onto him, and he loves thinking how he’s going to get even.

I started explaining how to detach quietly and just let the other person keep her anger. I said often the best thing to do in a gunfight is to jump on the Forgiveness Stagecoach and take the high road out of Dodge. His eyes opened wide, and with a big smile he said:

"So if I rise above revenge, take the high road of forgiveness, and if I take that sewer pipe up there with me, I can make that sewer flow backwards, can’t I?" I never thought about it that way, but now, I can’t get his smile and his picture out of my mind. Or for that matter, my wife’s picture of the pig fight. Nothing like a good laugh to pull the plug on a cesspool!

Imagine that you have messed up big time—physically abused your child, cheated on your wife, stole money at work, or lied to your husband about where you were. And let’s say you really want to make sure that both you and the people you’ve hurt can trust you not to do that again. How would you go about crafting an apology that would do all that?

The purpose of most apologies today is merely to minimize pain for the apologizers, protect their image, and enable them to avoid the work they need to do. Like any other form of lying, over time, a weak apology fails at all three of these goals.

Most people don’t know how to go about restoring both the trust of others and their own trustworthiness. That’s because there are so few role models in America for genuine remorse. I can’t recall when I last heard a satisfactory apology from a public figure who had made a moral mess, can you? An effective apology needs to answer three simple questions.

1. Why did I do it? Don’t blame it on the situation, or on anybody else’s behavior, because you can’t guarantee those won’t come up again. Besides, that doesn’t take responsibility for the choices you made about how to handle your feelings.

Sure, maybe you put yourself in a bad situation, and you can change that. But what attitudes have you harbored that provoked your choice? Afterwards, what beliefs have you used to rationalize or excuse your behavior? What images do you have of yourself and the other people involved here? Lots of beliefs about people can’t be proven right or wrong, but we can prove the kind of words and actions these beliefs will provoke and excuse.

2. Who did I hurt and how? Put yourself in their place. Imagine a situation where they could theoretically do something like this to you. Imagine how you’d feel, if there were no real remorse in the other person, how hard it would be to carry on like nothing had happened.

What would this do to your mind, your heart, your ability to go on like before doing things for that person, facing your friends and family, trying to go to sleep at night, or fighting off your own bad stress-related habits like eating or drinking to your frustration?

Then apply this to your situation, and to your loved one. "I understand that I have made you have to carry around feelings of ______ and _______, that I have embarrassed you in the eyes of ____, and that now you’re going to have to really struggle with your ________ and _______. This is what I have done to you. What else have I messed up in your life? I know that I have hurt _____ and _____, but who else do you think I have hurt, and how?"

3. What am I going to do about it? How will you clean up your side of the street? What will you do to help heal the hurt, and earn back the trust you have broken? Again, put yourself in their place—what would you need them to do in this situation to resolve your hurt and mistrust?

Do you need to go have a talk with others you have hurt, to see how your actions have affected them, and tell them you were wrong and you are sorry? How can you show them that you are going to teach yourself a lesson, by making sure you suffer more than all the pleasure you have derived from your bad habit over the years, and if possible, that you will suffer more than they will for your actions?

Do you need to get an education, like anger management training, or understanding another culture, gender or generation? Do you need to talk with someone to learn new role models for your behavior in certain situations?

Do you need counseling to work through old feelings that you’ve never expressed toward people in your childhood, feelings that piggyback on your natural emotions to provoke and rationalize your bad habits? Do you need residential treatment to break an addiction, to let your family have a break from you to heal, and to get you away from temptations you can’t resist?

Changing your beliefs requires admitting they caused harmful behavior, and that you can and should change them. You first confess this to people you’ve hurt, but real change inside requires you to tell others who share these attitudes and beliefs, especially the friends and family who taught them to you by their words and lifestyles. And your lifestyle will also have to change, to express and firm up your new attitudes and beliefs.

Why don’t we ever hear apologies that answer these three questions in America? Spin doctors say the public would see it as weak, weird and wacko, but I think those words better describe the conscience of any nation which values image over substance, and anesthesia over the truth that hurts while it is setting us free.

I pray that America may soon see a genuine, effective apology from one of its celebrities. And that you and I will amend our wrongs by praying that others can get over our mess because we are cleaning it up. That way we can bring some major good things out of the next bad situation we create.

I believe the number one killer of mental and relational health is the refusal to go through the learning experience of emotional pain. And if the most costly discomfort we refuse is withdrawal pains from toxic chemicals, habits and relationships, I believe the next biggest mental health buzz kill is the ever so common refusal to forgive others and oneself. I just have to take a stab here at trying to reduce just a little bit this colossal waste of serenity.

Forgiveness is a private act. It may never include an "I forgive you" talk. Sometimes the purpose of forgiving someone is to restore closeness in that relationship, and other times it is to allow detachment to create more distance. How forgiveness is expressed depends on the other person, and on the relationship, its purpose and how it will be acted out. But some purposes are common to all occasions of forgiveness.

Why? Christians are told that when the children of God forgive each other, it makes God happy. I believe it, as I believe God loves us and knows that forgiveness is good for us. It reduces the war and crime in our society, and on a personal level, our resentments, arguments, divorces, ulcers, insomnia and addictions. Besides, being kind and polite to our enemies without needing or expecting anything in return is just the best way to keep them at a safe distance.

Who? We need to forgive whoever we are angry at, whoever we dread seeing at Wal-Mart or McDonald's, and generally, all the people that can make us mad just by being happy. We also need to forgive ourselves. Believing that we have been forgiven by God or another person without forgiving ourselves is just like leaving a Christmas present all wrapped up under the tree -- it gives no joy to the giver or the receiver until we take it out into our everyday lives and trust that it will work.

What? We need to forgive everything they have ever done wrong, to us, to our loved ones or theirs, to themselves or others. We also need to forgive every good thing they have failed to do, and every bad thing they will ever do in the future too.

Now understand that forgiveness is not trust. Unlike forgiveness, trust has to be earned. We need to forgive for our own sakes, long before the other person has earned our trust that they won’t hurt us again. And if our enemy DOES mess up again, we need to trust ourselves to get over it when they do. This is a heck of a lot easier to do when we can kindly and politely forgive and wish them well without expecting anything in return. We can trust ourselves to get over another betrayal if we know how and why to forgive, and how to set and enforce healthy boundaries for ourselves (more about those below).

And forgiveness does not mean condoning the other person's behavior. It may or may not be a good idea to tell the other person you still think what they did was wrong, but it is always okay to say, "It is not that I am condoning or excusing what you did, I am just forgiving you."

When? ASAP. We don't need to wait until the other person repents, reforms, asks for forgiveness, or even admits that they were wrong. We sure don't need to wait until we feel like it, because forgiveness is a matter of faith, not feeling. We don't need to wait until we understand the other person, why they hurt us.

HOW CAN WE MAKE OURSELVES FORGIVE? First, we need to figure out other ways of making ourselves feel safe without carrying around the anger. Just believing that a resentment can be justified and smart is like wearing a gun on your hip – it keeps gentle people at a distance, attracts fighters, and generally provokes suspicion and rejection. Actually carrying a live resentment around is like loading up our guns and wearing bullets on our belts – we're carrying a chip on our shoulder, wearing our hurt on our sleeve, and just asking for trouble.

Second we need to practice healthy beliefs. We can never prove these beliefs right or wrong, but we can prove without a doubt the internal results of holding these beliefs: they calm us down. So taste these beliefs, and see that they are good: All human beings are capable of repentance and reform. If we were born into our enemies’ bodies and situations, we don't know whether or not we might have turned out much worse. When we are kind to them without needing or expecting anything in return, it delivers deep and painful wounds their prideful and vengeful egos.

Third, we need to set and carefully keep healthy boundaries. A boundary is not a threat to another person, but a promise to ourselves of what we will do to protect ourselves if they violate our safety zone. Protective behaviors that do not attack might include remarks such as, "Well that's your opinion," or "I'm sorry you feel that way." The important thing is to immediately change the subject or end the conversation, before you take offense or let yourself get upset. Otherwise, you would be showing blood to a shark. We can’t play it cool on the outside without being cool on the inside, and we can’t do that without forgiving all around.

Fourth, forgiveness can't be given until it has been received, not from our enemy, but from someone that accepts us as we are. Abiding in this grace, accepting ourselves as we are warts and all, is a process, not an event, a new life work of giving up and working through resentments against ourselves. Like with money, we have to have some forgiveness to give it away. Before we can put a smile on our face, we have to put one in our hearts, every day.

Fifth and finally, forgiving others is also a process. It is committing ourselves to a life work of daily giving up our resentments, justifications, plans for revenge, and wishes for our enemy to suffer or fail. It means doing this not when we feel like doing it, but especially when we don't. And we will fail if we just try to eliminate negative behaviors, because Nature abhors a vacuum. We must train in positive behaviors to put in the place of our old bad habits that provoked our enemies. We can pray for them in private, speak with them and about them respectfully in public. Or, instead of talking with them, we can make brief eye contact and give a quick little nod of recognition and a quick little smile before moving on to avoid them. If our light of goodwill doesn't shine on our enemies, we remain the frightened deer, when we could so much more enjoy being the brightened headlights.