And growing up many of us were taught that fear should be avoided. "Don't be afraid." "None of your friends are afraid." "I wouldn't be afraid, if I were you." These statements have caused us--as adults--to go into denial about fear. The moment we start to sense it, we bury it in our gut. We have trained ourselves not to see threats.

The fear stage is uncomfortable. It creates anxiety in us. We don't like it here. Markets know this. So they try to remove our anxieties and tell us everything is going to be fine, or they sell us some half-baked option that seems just plausible enough to us that it might work. It gives us hope, but in reality it doesn't work.

In order to thrive in today's world, we need to recognize and stay in this fear stage for awhile--while we take in facts and assess the threat and our options. We must learn to run toward our fear. Nothing will tell you more about yourself than knowing what you are afraid of. When we shake hands and befriend fear, we need to move quickly to the third stage--the stage of action--the anger stage.

top of page

3) Anger

But this automatic fear is temporary. It is quickly dismissed by our biological hardwiring because fear is passive and does not promote action. We need action in order to deal with a threat. Threats usually don't go away on their own.

In order for our trio to be successful in dealing with the dragon, fear is a luxury they cannot afford for long. But for a moment, they will be afraid, and that is good. Physiologically when they were afraid they had increased blood flow to their skeletal muscles, brain, and heart; they had increased adrenaline; and decreased blood flow to the face and skin. This increases their powers of perception, increases their strength, and anesthetizes them to pain. These are vital assets when you are threatened.

Yet most of you when you say "fear" and "anger" in this model you had negative thoughts. These emotions are not negative at all. They are your friends, your teachers, and your allies.

While they are afraid, their eyes, ears, and other senses will go on autopilot as they take in the facts of the situation and process reasonable alternative actions--attack, run away to plan, run away to hide ... The three may be conscious of these thoughts, or the thinking may seem surreal, as if they were an observer watching it all in a movie. However the fear information is processed, this emotion will quickly go away. The fear will then be transformed into another emotion: anger.

The fear may just last an instant, but then it quickly looks for a place to settle. This emotion quickly transforms into anger. But you may not call it anger--distain, hatred, rage, irritated, mad, enraged, upset, bitter, annoyed, displeased, fuming, galled, incensed, inflamed, riled, storming, wrathful--variations in intensity of anger.

I know what some of you are thinking: "I don't get mad. I get sad." But you are still angry. Let me explain.

Inside each of us is own unique biochemistry--the genetics controlling our impulsiveness to act a certain way when we are threatened. These biochemical factors are the intuitive way we are wired to react to fearful situations. Do we impulsively want to go hide, or are we inclined to get ready for a fight? Some people are wired one way, some another.

But despite these natural tendencies, the messages we've been given throughout our life create in each of us an inner voice, which can cause us to alter and temper our natural hardwiring. Some of us are hardwired to get angry and that's what we do. For others of us, we've been raise that people shouldn't get mad, so the anger is suppressed. When we're backed into a corner, maybe we want to fight, but growing maybe up we were always told "fighting is wrong." Maybe we want to run and hide, but growing up we saw that "real men protect themselves." The messages we are given throughout our lives--often very subtlely--cause us to consciously or subconsciously control and alter these natural tendencies.

There are five typical responses to anger:

Repression: Pretending that you aren't angry. Denying to yourself that you are angry. "The dragon doesn't bother me, even though he throws the dead bodies of his victims in my yard."
Supression: Knowing you're angry, but keeping it to yourself. Locking the anger inside so the world can't see it. Outer voice: "I like the dragon." Inner voice: "I hate the dragon."
Projection: Pretending you aren't mad, but others are. "The dragon doesn't bother me much, but we have to take action because the rest of the village sure is in an uproar."
Diffusion: Admitting you're angry, but not focusing on the root cause of the anger. Anger is expressed in general terms, to a broad target, which may or may not include the actual source of the anger. "I hate this village. My life is so miserable here. It's gotten even worse with this dragon problem."
Misplaced: Where the individual is mad at one thing, but takes out the anger on something completely unrelated--kicking the dog, for example. This is where most child abuse comes from. "Leave me alone!!! Can't you see I'm thinking about this stupid dragon?"

This secondary emotion (anger) is a result, a byproduct, of the fear. It is where the fear fuses with our genetic makeup and our inner voice. We get angry. There are two types of anger: outward and inward. Anger turn outward is traditional anger. It is where someone gets mad at someone or something.

The second type of anger looks different. It is anger turned inward, turned on ourselves. We call it sadness or depression.

In today's world, some work makes you happy and gives you a sense of fulfillment--teaching perhaps, repairing computers, practicing law. We are sometimes pulled to professions by the joy they bring us. And in life we often want work that makes us feel happy.

But there is another angle. Other people get their fulfillment because they have something they need to fight--teachers who fight ignorance, computer techs who fight technological barriers, attorneys who fight injustice. And, if truth be told, most of us feel both of these in our jobs. Or do we?

Actually, of the two, anger is the more powerful emotion, because it enables you to take more risks and makes you a little numb to the pain of defeats along your career path. Angry people will step out a little more than people looking for happiness. Larry King once said that the ideal guest on his talk show is someone with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. And look at any superhero on TV and you well see some anger. Even Christ got angry at times. Anger give you focus. It is your friend.

But a word of caution: Make sure you are angry at the right thing. Find out what makes you mad, and you will often discover something that is lacking in yourself. I've seen clerks angry at their limited career progress, so they take it out on their customers. I've seen people angry at their boss for not paying them enough, but the real problem was the individual's spending habits. Now a day, angry people are just jerks. Their anger is misplaced and out of control. They are reckless. You must identify your anger and master it. It must be subdued.

top of page

4) Bliss

Anger is the action stage. It is where work occurs. It dispatches the threat with action. Or it is where the threatened give their all to a worthy cause. Yes, there is a risk in loosing the battle, but if the battle is never fought, victory is never achieved and our trio will live out their life with a terrible disease because they did not have the courage to even attempt the fight. Many people suffer from this illness, and they go undiagnosed. The disease is called "regret."

As you ponder this concept, consider this quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

We live in an age of abundance. Most of us have everything we need and almost everything we want. The main areas of pain in modern man are financial, health-related, and in family relationships. There isn't much to really get excited about other than these areas. There is little sense of passion about our chosen professions. Nothing tangible threatens us. We have no fears. We're safe, until we wake up and we have no money, a sour relationship with someone we used to love, and we feel trapped in a body we don't like.

But there is so much more to life! The main way to determine your purpose in life is to figure out what threatens you, take the time to be afraid (so you can process the threat), and then get mad--mad enough to take action. People searching for generic 'happiness' in their work rarely achieve it. The quest for happiness is a red herring, a bait, a trick, an illusion. You have to go through the threat-fear-anger steps first.

People are happiest when they are fighting the good fight. Don't consider talents and abilities right now. Lack of talent can hold you back and be your Achilles heal, but the opposite is NOT true--great talent does not guide great work. You can ooze talent in a given area and hate the work and be unfulfilled. Sometimes natural talent seduces people into a line of work that is not their calling. I have a friend who is a computer genius, so that's what he does with his life ... and he hates it. He loves construction. So he spends 60 hours a week in a job he hates, and tinkers in his area of passion. What's wrong with that picture?

Is he the most talented carpenter in the area? No, not by a long shot. But he has enough skills in this area that he could get by, and probably fine tune this skill set. If you know what threatens you and you figure out what makes you angry--and blend the two together--you're somewhat anesthetized to the painful growth process as you work toward mastering the skill.

Anger helps you go through the painful growth process of becoming an expert. The discipline necessary to harness something that is not your first gift is a great teacher. Often, talented people get sloppy and lazy using their natural gifts, because they don't have to work to master it. It doesn't take any discipline. It's a cheap gift.

There are four topics to consider as you define your work purpose. These are in prioritized order:

1) What threatens you?

2) What opportunities do you have? Keep your eyes open--they change from moment to moment.

3) What makes you angry?

4) Do you have any skill deficits that will be your Achilles heal?

This is very different than the type of list you are used to looking at. I really need to discuss each one more, but don't have the time right now. The third one is currently on my mind (as you can tell from my ramblings), so I'll elaborate on it a bit more.

Consider what threats you, what makes you afraid, and your options. Look not just at what brings you joy, but also look at what makes you angry. We've suppressed this anger so much we've resigned ourselves to accept--or expect--apathy in our work. As the Dominican priest Fr. Bede Jarrett observed, "The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough." Your true purpose in life has an element of anger in it. You are fighting something. It is only by knowing what threatens you, what makes you afraid, and what brings you anger that you can give you true purpose--and happiness--in your work. Fail to you this, and you resign yourself to what Henry David Thoreau called a life of "quiet desperation."

Some people who consider threats, fear, and anger do so internally, and quietly. Others commit the result to pen and paper. Here are but two of such work statements of purpose:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4:18-19

I know this has a religious context and the statement seems so lofty that it is not relevant for many of us. But set this aside for the moment. Can you sense the threat? Do you think He was ever afraid? Can you feel the desire to fight?

Here's one from a great movie:

"Take a deep breath of life and consider how it should be lived:

• Call nothing your own except thy soul.
• Love not what you are, but only what you may become.
• Do not pursue pleasure, for you may have the misfortune to overtake it.
• Look always forward; in last year's nest there are no birds this year.
• Be just to all men. Be courteous to all women.
• Live in the vision of that one for whom great deeds are done."

Again, there is threat, fear, and a desire to fight. A call to action.

Note that the four parts of the work cycle repeat. As we work on one threat, that threat disappears. It goes away, if we are diligent. But another threat is always right behind. It's an endless circle. We never break free, but we move to a greater good as each threat is mastered.

Not everyone who goes through the work cycle goes on to live the comfortable life. Perhaps none of the ones who do it well really do. Think about the truly great people out there. They all went through the cycle: Thomas Jefferson, Chirst, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and the list goes on and on.

Today's world is different than the past times of brave knights, beautiful princesses, and fearsome dragons. Over the years we have lost our ability to perceive many of the things that truly threaten us. We have forgotten how important fear is in helping us assess these threats. And we no longer recognize and value anger in a way that we can harness its energy. Our work cycle is broken.

Yes, there are dragons. Beasts that threaten. Beasts we fear. Creatures that stir anger within us. But they are our friends--not our enemies. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better." The same applies to dragons. To gain dominion over what threatens us is what I call "work." But we cannot rule over these unless they become our friend.

Go back and look at the quote from my friend, Sue. Realize that all the dragons you've tamed and all the ones still there aren't outside. They're all in you ... and me. Do we steal and horde, or do we protect beauty? It's our choice.

Top of Page