ANGER is an instinctive emotional response to frustration.

TEMPER is a measure of how quickly you respond to your anger. ANGER comes naturally; TEMPER is a learned behaviour. As a child you quickly learned which expressions of anger were acceptable to your parents. Through the years, you've learned other expressions, but they're all basically conditioned responses. Excessive frustration can lead to chronic rage. Anger and rage are common defences for people that have had little recognition of their feelings in childhood, particularly those that had to be "tough".

TEMPER is like a lighted match. Hold it tight and get burned, throw it aside to do its destructive worst, or blow it out before anyone gets hurt. Dealing with customers, clients, employees, or employers demands the exercise of great self-control. If someone is successful in business, you can be sure that he or she has developed self-control skills like these:

1. Refuse to take insults personally. People under stress say a lot of things they don't really mean.

2. Doing business often requires that you change people's attitudes. Your first tendency is to go for victory in open combat. But rather than create a win-lose situation, seek a win-win approach.

3. Be as pleasant with your last customer or client of the day as you are with the first one this morning.

4. Take 30 seconds to compose your thoughts whenever a conflict arises. Then act calmly and purposefully.

5. Be willing to lose a sale rather than your temper. (This will probably save more deals than it loses.)

6. Concentrate on the real goal. Point your customer, client, or associate in the desired direction.

7. Remind yourself of the other person's good points. You can't do anything about other people's bad attributes, so just focus on their positive traits.

8. Keep your mind on proper business techniques and work on improving your techniques daily.

9. Limit the time you spend with each customer on associate. Tend to business, control and direct the situation, and focus on your prime objective.

10. Apply these principles to all of your life--at home and in your civic life as well as on the job. After some practice, these ideas will become second nature.