Back in high school, Jon Gaynor gave me some performance advice that I use to this day. He told me that when he went out on stage feeling angry at his audience, which saved him the trouble of trying to quell the fear of what people were thinking and the anxiety of giving a flawed performance.

I thought about it when he shared his advice, I used it a few times since then, even in situations were anger was the least appropriate emotion to be having at the time.

Over the years, I've realized that anger is useful for a lot of things. For the moments that you're angry at someone, you gain a degree of control. You can't feel inferior because the anger won't let you show weakness to its target. You are driven by your anger to achieve your objective, if only to be able to stand down by solving it.

So over the years, I've cultured my anger in a very task-oriented sense. When the house gets cluttered and reaches the breaking point, I'm angry at the mess and the way it keeps me from doing things. Yeah I could be lazy and forgive it, but the clutter is mocking me! It must be shown who is boss.

When a project gets out of bounds, I can focus my aggression on the fact that it is making me look bad. My anger shrinks the project down to a reasonable size. There are no more looming storm-clouds overhead, just a punk-ass project with weaknesses. My anger-motivated brain hones in on those soft spots and shows me how to nuke the project into a solved oblivion.

Sometimes there is, as the military says, collateral damage. I warn people away from me while I clean my living space hurricane style, because if they are sitting in the way, they are part of the problem and therefore become encompassed in the problem-solving anger field. Laundry doesn't have hurt feelings, but housemates do.

As well at work it often it takes a fair amount of professional discipline to separate the slacker from the target of my anger while seething at the unaccomplished to-do items. Once the project is solved or the room is cleaned, suddenly the source of the anger has been vanquished and I can go back to being my friendly self with everyone, one ominous task lighter.

No Comments | #5270

Unless noted, all content on epistolary.org is © Copyright 1999-2008 to Rob Carlson with all rights reserved. All information is verified when possible, cited as appropriate and applied in the real world at your own risk. Send all feedback to rob@vees.net.