How Can Anger Generate Positivity and Empowerment?
Recognize, acknowledge, choose, and do.
Despite the many flaws and awful dialogue in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Yoda utters one extremely deep and useful nugget of wisdom.
“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
Just about everything you do is inadvertently checked by our fear-based society. The bombardment of messages telling you to fear this, fear that, be afraid of them, and on and on, quickly overwhelms you. Much of that fear targets your sense of lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and suffering as a result.
A frequent path many find themselves on as a result of this is to anger. It’s very easy to get angry about real and perceived problems, slights, challenges, and so on. Anger can be a dangerous thing when it leads to violence, destruction, and the like. If anger leads to hate, as Yoda warns, suffering is sure to follow.
Anger is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. The trouble with anger is, unrecognized and unacknowledged, the most typical course can be anger to hate to suffering. That’s because most fear is not about a given thing you’re afraid of.
For example, a fear of falling has nothing to do with the fall itself. The fear of falling is the suffering that will result from the fall. Injuries, broken bones, and death are some heavy suffering, and that’s what you fear. Likewise, fear of spiders isn’t about the arachnids themselves, but how they might bite you, harm you, and cause pain and suffering.
Even intangibles aren’t the fear itself, but the fear of suffering. Fear of failure and success both tend to be suffering involving abandonment, loss, and loneliness.
When fear leads to anger, what comes next is a matter of choice.
Anger as a motivator
Anger can be a truly wondrous motivator. It can open your eyes to inadequacies in yourself and outside of yourself, spur you into action, and get your creative juices flowing.
Everyone does this subconsciously from time to time. You’ve done it. Someone told you a thing couldn’t be done, you lacked a talent, there wasn’t enough of something, or some other statement was made that you reacted to with anger, but that anger was the spark that got you moving.
Fear leads to anger, and that’s the truth. However, where it leads is a choice you get to make. Does anger lead you to hate and suffering, or motivate you to action and accomplishment?
That’s the choice you face when fear turns to anger. Motivate and do something with it or let it make you hateful?
This is the first part of turning anger into positivity. Anger as a motivator is an act of active conscious awareness. Yes, I’m talking about mindfulness, of course.
Mindfulness is being aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are, here and now. In this present moment, you take responsibility for accountability and focus on being aware. Aware specifically of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you intend, if your approach is positive or negative, and the actions you take.
Anger can be a motivator to lead to action and accomplishment. That’s done via 4 simple steps.
Recognize, acknowledge, choose, and do
Applying these steps is a matter of mindfulness. This can be done only in the present, and it is empowering and powerful.
It begins when you recognize anger. Active conscious awareness analyzes thoughts and feelings, telling you, “I’m angry.” Anger can be mistaken for other things, that’s why the first step to converting anger to positivity is recognition.
Next, acknowledge that you’re angry. All too often, you’ve been told anger is bad and should be avoided. But avoiding anger doesn’t make it go away. In truth, avoiding it often makes it grow bigger, more negative, and ultimately leads to hate. Hence, it’s not enough to recognize, but you need to acknowledge anger. “I’m angry, and I can’t/won’t deny it.”
Now comes the part where you break from Yoda’s cycle. Anger leads to hate when it remains negative, unrecognized, and unacknowledged. However, that hate might be directed inwards as much as outwards. It can take the form of low-level seething to outright destructive tendencies. Why do you think politicians love weaponizing hate? They know how to manipulate your fear of suffering.
It need not be that way. You can choose to use anger for motivation. Don’t allow it to lead to hate, instead, choose to use the energy of your anger to motivate change. “I’m angry, and I can’t/won’t deny it. I choose to use that to motivate making change.”
Once you’ve recognized, acknowledged, and chosen to use anger to motivate you to action, do it. Intentionally take action to use the energy to do something positive to create change.
Important caveat: This can be applied to you, and you alone, Yes, it can impact the greater good or the world at large. However, it can only be about changing your being/doing and the like.
Empowerment for change
The final statement from the application of the above, and using anger to motivate change, generate positivity, and empower you is “I’m angry, and I can’t/won’t deny it. I choose to use that to motivate making change. I’m doing it here and now.”
You can fall down the path to the dark side by allowing, subconsciously, your fear to turn to anger, then lead to hate and result in suffering.
– OR –
You can consciously recognize fear turning to anger, acknowledge it, and then choose to act for your own good with the motivation of anger to do something that leads to an accomplishment/achievement.
Anger can be destructive, but it can also be a powerful tool of empowerment. You, and you alone, have the ability to use it for your own good. That can further lead to doing more for the greater good. Why? Because empowered people become beacons of light in the dark of this fear-based society. Inspiration inspires. Empowerment empowers.
You will get angry. It’s inevitable. However, it’s not so black and white as the path to the dark side. Not when you choose to apply it to motivate your actions.
Using anger to generate positivity isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that fear has led you to anger, you can choose to continue towards hate and suffering or instead recognize it, acknowledge it, choose to do something, and then take action to accomplish/achieve something positive. Knowing that you have the power to choose if anger will be negative or positive, you can use anger to motivate change and make improvements to your life experience.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and twenty-ninth (529) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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