How Does One Harness the Power of Anger?

You know, I’m aware of having this underlying sense of anger today.  Actually, it’s been around for a couple of days.  Most of the time I’m able to keep it at bay — shuffled off to the side, definitely out of my conscious awareness.  Today it’s just begging to be heard.  And what’s really frustrating is that I’m not 100% sure what I’m angry about (which, I imagine, is the downside of shuffling anger to the side — you forget what you’re angry about in the first place). 

So now I’m on day 3 (or maybe 4) of beeing less productive than I’d like.  I’ve got a lot going on that I’d like to forge ahead with — projects, ideas, workshops, classes, etc; — and none of it is coming to fruition.  And I’ve got this sense that if I could just make this anger work for me, I’d be on to something.

One of my mentors once told me that anger is given a bad rap, when really it can be a powerfully creative force.  The challenge in our society is that we’ve labelled anger as a “negative emotion” — one that’s best not expressed – and so very few people are able to use anger constructively and effectively to create new opportunities or avail themselves of old ones.  And even those people who may venture into the realm of expressing anger constructively, tend to worry about how the anger will be perceived.  Now there’s an interesting stumblinb block.  By worrying about what the other person is going to think, I stop myself from finding a constructive outlet — and then this blocks by whole process.   Hmmm.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking about blowing my top at every opportunity.  But I think there actually is a way to say what needs to be said — whether angry, sad, frustrated, irritated, or whatever — and let it go.  So the challenge as I see it is two-fold (as all communication issues tend to be):  first, the angry person needs to be able to express their anger and let it go, and second, the recipient of the angry comments needs to really get that while the anger may be directed at them, it really isn’t ABOUT them.  A person’s reactions are always about themselves, nothing else.  Which, of course, is a paraphrase of learning from the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz — which I’m going to go and re-read.    Because what I really need to look at here isn’t outside of me but inside me — what is it inside me that’s having me feel anger?  Curious query.  And the, how do I harness the power of that anger and have it work for me?  ‘Cuz I know I can