The essence of anger
As part of the 2011 theme at the Boston Martial Arts Center, I was doing some digging around in my brain today about anger, especially after a learning experience this morning at the dojo. (a learning experience, as my college political science teacher once quipped, is what you get when you don’t get what you want) This year’s theme is all about looking in the mirror, looking inside, and freeing ourselves from ourselves. As a result, I spent a lot of time rooting around in my head about my anger, how I value it, and some ways I make it useful. I hope it’s useful to you.
In Buddhism, all unhappiness begins when reality isn’t the way we want it to be. Your cake falls in the oven, your kid throws a tantrum, your department misses its numbers, your Twitter followers abandon you – whatever the case is, reality and what you want are not the same thing.
Fear is when you have an unwanted reality that you want to run away from. Fear of losing something, fear of heights, fear of a tiger trying to eat you, fear of rejection – all of these things we try to run away from. Fear’s a vital component of our survival and always will be. It’s a primordial emotion that keeps us alive in times of true danger, and when it serves its purpose, we are grateful.
So what does that make anger? Anger is an unwanted reality that you want to forcefully impose your will upon. Anger at a child’s temper tantrum, anger at an insult, anger at a spouse’s seemingly unreasonable point of view, anger at a company’s treatment of its employees – all of these things we want to impose our will on. If only they would do it our way, everything would be all right. If only they would stop doing what we don’t want and start doing what we want. If only they would submit and surrender, our anger would be sated.
Anger’s a vital component of our survival, too. Think about it for a second. If fear makes you flee from something, anger makes you rush in to conquer it. If you’re fighting for your life and retreating isn’t a possibility, anger keeps you in the fight. If you’re starving for a meal, anger lets you conquer the animal, kill it, win over it, and have something to eat. Acknowledging that anger is as much a part of us as fear and other survival instincts is vitally important. Far too many people try to demonize anger, theirs and others, to claim that it simply shouldn’t be there. To deny anger’s existence and usefulness in the right context is to deny something incredibly basic that’s wired into us, something that is there to help us in the right context.
If fear chills, anger boils. If fear is about avoiding a loss, anger is about winning a victory at any cost, and that’s the key right there to taming the beast. If you can have the presence of mind during an anger experience to ask yourself if there’s anything worth winning, you can very quickly short circuit it and pull the rug out from under its feet.
If a child is throwing a tantrum, ask yourself what’s left to win by expelling your anger on them. Not much to win, is there? Tears, a runny nose, and some parental guilt – some prize, huh? If a supervisor at your company is doing something callous and uncaring, ask yourself what’s left to win by getting fired up at her or him. Is getting on their bad actors list a worthy prize? Is losing your job a worthy prize? Not much left to win there.
Sometimes there is a very worthy prize, and when there is, anger is absolutely called for and appropriate. If someone is trying to harm your family, there is a very worthy prize at stake. With focus, direct your anger to win that prize. If someone is trying to rape you, there is a very worthy prize at stake. With skill, channel your anger into winning over them. If someone is malevolently destroying your company and your livelihood by extension, there is a worthy prize, especially if you have a family to feed. With cunning and cleverness, harness your anger to be effective in neutralizing them.
Try this perspective the next time you’re angry. Ask yourself the honest question: is there anything worth winning? If you have trouble maintaining presence of mind even during anger, write it down somewhere you can see it in situations that make you angry, or hold a contest with yourself to see how quickly you can distract yourself so that you can think again and ask yourself what’s left to win. If the prize isn’t worth it, you may find that the angry simply fades away as the rest of your body, mind, and spirit figure out that there’s no point fighting for a valueless prize and that there are better opportunities for victory ahead.
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I see what you did there
I see what you did there is one of my favorite expressions. I’m not sure where it came from or how it got into my vocabulary (I suspect Chris Brogan), but it encapsulates nearly everything I believe in as a student of marketing, martial arts, and life. You see, most of the lessons I’ve had to learn or teach myself over the years were not explicit lessons. Sure, a whole bunch during childhood came on handy worksheets and structured exams. They had right answers and wrong answers. You knew when the lesson was done because the worksheet was at an end. Once I left school, however, the worksheets, term papers, and grades stopped. The lessons didn’t.
My teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, often says that he is never NOT teaching. Everything is a lesson, from how you’re supposed to set up a dojo kamiza (point of focus) to how you’re supposed to walk, both literally and figuratively. Not everything will be handed to us or spoon-fed as students; in fact, some of the most important lessons are not even hinted at.
Life is full of lessons. Life is always teaching, whether or not we’re paying attention.
I see what you did there is an explicit acknowledgement and compliment I give to someone when I see a lesson that has been presented to me, whether they meant to give it or not. I see what you did there is a mental trick I use on myself as a way of reminding myself to constantly look for lessons. When someone pulls a nice social media marketing trick, I love to say I see what you did there – and I add it to my mental catalog of lessons. When someone repositions a mob as an off tank in a Warcraft raid, I love to say I see what you did there – and I add it to my mental catalog of lessons.
There are two lessons here for you. First, look for similar acknowledgements from other people. Everyone has a different way of subtly pointing out something especially clever. Learn the language of the people you respect and when you see their version of I see what you did there, you know you’re looking at something especially powerful that you need to copy, learn, or adapt. One of my teachers is fond of grinning and saying, “Noticed that, did you?” and when I hear that, I know I’ve found something worth investigating more. Another jokes and kids when he says, “Isn’t that lovely, June?” and most people laugh it off. I’m scribbling notes madly. What do your teachers say, and do you pay enough attention to catch it?
Second, look for opportunities in your own life to say I see what you did there to people. In doing so, you’ll train your mind to look for all of the lessons and all of the teachers that life presents, not just the ones you’ve hired or followed. Look for a chance to say I see what you did there every day, and you’ll find more opportunities to learn than you could ever pay for.
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The action of giving thanks
We make reality in our world in three ways: thought, word, and action.
It’s good to think about gratitude, to think about all we have that we might otherwise not. The grateful mind helps shape our view of the world and deepens our appreciation of everything that we have.
It’s good to speak of gratitude, to give voice to the gratitude in our heads. Our words can inspire gratitude in others, a way to brighten the lives around us and remind our collective selves of what we have.
But this is where we often stop. We say our thanks around the dinner table on a certain day of the year, we eat the roasted beast, and call it a day.
Is that thanks enough?
The last piece of the magic puzzle is to take action, to express gratitude through action. If we acknowledge that the society around us, for good or ill, has created the series of actions and sequences that has given rise to the fortune we have (meager or vast), then if we can find a way to contribute back to it, that is acting with gratitude.
Maybe it’s a donation of your time, volunteering towards a worthy cause. Maybe it’s a financial or material donation, giving to others as you’ve been given. Even a small amount, a tiny spark, is enough to start a fire under the right conditions. Maybe it’s the adoption of an animal or the delivery of a dinner to someone who can’t provide for themselves.
Whatever the form is, action completes the process of bringing what’s inside of you out into the world. Action takes intention and spoken commitment and brings it to fruition as something tangible, something that will change your world.
After you express the thought of thanks, after you speak the words of thanks, find a way to commit to the action of thanks and in doing so, give someone else a reason to be thankful as well.
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Committing to the cut
Every year at New England Warrior Camp, we have the opportunity to do tameshigiri, or live blade cutting. A bamboo mat is soaked in water, rolled up, and put on a pedestal. Martial practitioners then take a sharp sword and attempt to cut it in half.
Learning how to perform a cut with a sword is only part of the picture. Once you learn the mechanics of making a cut and how to operate a sword, the next hardest part is making the commitment to cut. Many people are hesitant to put their full weight, momentum, and force behind their sword cut, and as a result they get through half the mat at best. Some nearly bounce off of it, making only a surface scratch.
Tameshigiri illustrates this lack of commitment in a very visceral, obvious way. If you don’t commit to the cut, you get an exceptionally poor result. If the tameshigiri target were an actual attacker, you’d be ineffective at best.
Why do you hesitate with a katana? Why don’t you commit to the cut? Sometimes it’s lack of confidence in your knowledge and ability about how to use a sword. Sometimes it’s outright fear of the sword – understandably so, since most people don’t routinely use a four foot razor blade regularly. But sometimes, it’s a deeper fear of committing and putting your full force behind anything at all in life that holds you back from even something as simple as swinging a sword.
Once you make that personal breakthrough, once you get some knowledge, overcome your fear, and commit to giving it your all, the sword cuts. The target falls, lopped in half, and you walk away amazed at yourself, amazed at what you are capable of. Despite your lack of confidence, despite your fear, your willingness to commit, your will to act, pushes you through to victory and success.
Ask yourself this:
What in your life are you seeing lackluster results in?
What in your life are you seeing lackluster results in because you are hesitating to commit, and how would your life change for the better if you pushed past your fear, pushed past your hesitation, and committed to the cut?
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The will to focus
Over dinner with some fellow Blue Sky Factory employees, a question came up: how do you get more done? How do you be more productive? The answer is deceptively simple (and of course, the usual reminder that simple is not easy):
You need to cultivate the will to focus.
Focus is relatively easy. Turn off everything except the one task you need to be working on, and get it done. Power off your phone, shut off Twitter, etc. (unless of course those are the tasks) and burn down whatever needs to get done.
The will to focus is different than focus. It’s much harder. The will to focus is the self discipline needed to willingly shut off and keep shut off all those distractions that take us away from what we know we need to do. It’s the little notifications we’ve eagerly accepted into our lives that tell us new mail has arrived, friends are chatting, buzz is happening, all holding the promise of something interesting or exciting.
There’s a lottery-like element to it that makes it especially compelling, and there’s a scientific basis to it. Is it junk? Is it a note from a friend? A tweet from that guy or girl you met at a conference? That extra bit of randomness adds an almost game-like quality to the notifications, increasing their addictive power (as any casino operator will gleefully attest to).
How do you develop the will to focus? Practice. Like breaking any behavioral habit, it requires you to practice doing it, first in little steps, then increasingly in length and frequency. Start with a simple minute of meditation a day, but as part of that, take the time to turn off things. No one will miss you for a minute, and you won’t miss anyone or anything for a scant 60 seconds. Develop that initial reflexive habit to shut things off for a minute a day, and then work up from there.
After a while, the will to focus will become second nature and your friends, colleagues, coworkers, and acquaintances will be baffled by how productive you are.
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It takes two to make a bully
I was reading bedtime stories the other night and came across a gem by Richard Scarry in the 365 Bedtime Stories compendium, which I think is incredibly illustrative of the way we dealt with bullies in the past and the way we deal with them now.
In the short story The Rudiments, a boy is bullied in the schoolyard and goes home to his father. His father, knowing how the rules of the schoolyard go, teaches his son the rudiments of boxing. Later on, the bully returns to the boy and gets a bloodied nose for his efforts. They make up afterwards and become schoolyard friends.
How much our culture has changed in the 35 years since Scarry’s book was written. How little personal responsibility we are willing to take, and how little personal responsibility we encourage our children to take for their own safety, welfare, and confidence. I’m reminded of a quote from my teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes: it takes two to make a bully – the bully and a willing victim. Most bullies are folks who are not looking for a fair fight. They’re looking for someone to use. If it’s obvious you’re not going to roll over and give in, they’ll typically move on to someone easier, someone who is willing to play the role they want them to play.
When I look at the “epidemic” of schoolyard bullying, there is blame to be assigned, unquestionably. It’s not the school’s fault. It’s not the bullies’ fault. It’s not the child’s fault.
The blame squarely falls on the parents of the bullied child.
Now, just to be clear, the bully has as much responsibility for the act of bullying as the victim, but the reality of life is that there will always be bullies, jackasses, profoundly clueless and deeply irresponsible people, and just plain idiots. When they do something stupid, it has an impact, unquestionably, but you have little to no control over them. You have total control over yourself and how you choose to respond, and a bullied child has that same control and responsibility. That’s where parents are falling down hard now – they’re taking away (or never giving) their kids that power.
Every time you intercede on your child’s behalf or appeal to the school system, every time you negotiate for more impotent rules to attempt to govern the behavior of other people’s kids, every time you whisk your child away from an unpleasant situation without encouraging them to solve it for themselves, every time you give away your child’s power to stand up for themselves to a teacher, monitor, lawyer, principal, you make them that much weaker and more vulnerable to bullying, especially when they’re very young. It’s akin to blasting your immune system with antibiotics every time you get a runny nose. The immune system’s ability to fight back is never tested and strengthened, and when some serious illness comes along, your body completely caves in. The same exact principle is at work every time you swoop in to rescue your child.
Stop coddling your child and interceding on their behalf, and teach them how to fight back by whatever means are available. Enroll them in a martial arts class. Teach them how to network and be an incredible friend-maker so that other kids in the schoolyard will ally with your child, even if they’re physically not able to fight back. Teach them most of all how to stand up for themselves against all those who would do them harm, because if you don’t, they will be permanent victims for life.
When I was a kid, I got a healthy dose of bullying in the schoolyard, especially being small, short, and not especially athletic. Instead of just giving into it or crying to my parents about it, I took action, finding friends willing to help me stand up against it and finding my own, very unique ways to fight back against it. Later on, I got involved in the martial arts to strengthen my physical abilities to protect myself and the people I cared about, but most important, my parents (especially my dad) encouraged me to stand up for myself however I could from very early on, and true to form, the bullies went elsewhere, for easier opportunities.
Bullying changes as you get older, but it never stops. The physical acts of violence might diminish, perhaps, but there are just as many bullies in your cubicle farm now as there are on your playground of yesterday. The tormentor who made fun of you being tall, short, black, white, fat, thin, whatever back then is the one who gossips against you now, sending memos to undercut you, makes discriminatory comments behind your back, and is working to sabotage the people around him or her because they can.
If your child never learns how to stand up and punch someone in the face (literally or metaphorically) from very early on, then they will endure it for the rest of their lives, because bullies and asshats are a perpetual constant. Wouldn’t you rather give your child the confidence to escape or stop a bad situation when they’re very young, so that they learn it’s okay to stand up for themselves, that it’s not okay to be a victim, for the rest of their lives?
What if your child became so strong, so confident, so powerful in their own right with your guidance that they not only stood up for themselves, but stood up for others and were able to make their own schoolyard world a little brighter, more cheerful, more safe? Wouldn’t that be amazing? It all starts with your role as a parent to help build that strong personality, that strength of character and confidence, that iron will to act and not waver in the face of wrongness.
Incidentally, those are also the attributes of the people we call heroes.
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