The Gift of Anger

In 2017, I attended a lecture at the Emirates Festival of Literature in Dubai by Arun Gandhi the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi about ten spiritual lessons he learnt while living with his grandfather when he was a young boy.

These lessons are detailed in his book entitled "The Gift of Anger".

In lesson one he speaks about using anger for good. Mahatma Gandhi had taught him how to use a spinning wheel to spin cotton and they used to spend 2 hours on it every day. It was a very calming activity that also allowed them to have deep conversations when needed. Arun that day had an anger episode where he publicly expressed his rage. Instead of punishing him, his grandfather invited him to the spinning wheel and started by saying: "I am glad to see you can be moved to anger, anger is good. I get angry all the time". The little boy was surprised because he had never seen his grandfather angry. So Mahatma Gandhi said "I have learned to use my anger for good" and went on to explain that "anger to people is like gas to the automobile- it fuels you to move forward and get to a better place. Without it we would not be motivated to rise to a challenge. It is an energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust."

Anger towards ourselves makes us look at ourselves, reflect change and move forward. It pushes us to become better human beings but we must learn how to use its creative energy for the good which stops it from taking over and becoming destructive.

I remember sitting with this concept for a long time and over the years, as I went deeper into my own transformational journey and coached more leaders on becoming more creative rather than reactive in their approach I realized what an essential lesson this is. understanding our anger, befriending it and using it for good is a journey.

The first step is to become conscious of the different ways you express your anger and conscious of what is driving it. One way to help with this awareness is to keep an anger journal, which is what Mahatma Gandhi had advised his grandson to do. He recommended he writes with the intention to find a solution to the problem he is facing. It's not about pouring your anger onto the journal, but about building awareness, mental strength and control over the mind over time.

I was never allowed to express my anger as a little girl. I was always supposed to behave and be proper and so I just got used to keeping the anger inside, burying it so deep that I didn't even know it was there anymore. When I was 16, I was in a musical play and I remember the director working with me for over an hour on a scene where I was supposed to scream and I just couldn't. He finally gave up and said "well we have to accept the fact that you're just not a screamer!" and he gave the lines to someone else. I remember feeling proud at the time that I am not a screamer and a part of me was absolutely relieved that I didn't have to scream on stage in front of 500 people! Little did I know that not being a screamer also meant not being able to tap into my anger and use my voice to express it even in a made-up scenario on stage.

A leadership trait that NY Times best-selling author, Harvard Law School lecturer and Mobius Executive Leadership founder #EricaArielFox talks about in detail in her bestselling book #WinningFromWithin is the "Warrior". The Warrior is one of four inner negotiators as she calls them. These "inner negotiators have a range of styles, motivations, and rules of engagement. They have their own interests and preferred outcomes. They also correlate with different regions in our brains." They act like an inner executive team where the Chief Operating Officer is your inner Warrior. "This part of you is led by willpower, and excels at taking action. In the work world, the inner Warrior steps forward to tell the hard truth and to take a stand for your values." Using your anger for good, means that you are able to fully step into the strengths of your warrior while being completely centered.

As you can tell from my personal story some attributes of the Warrior don't come naturally to me. I am great at taking action and I have very strong willpower but I've had to define my boundaries more clearly over the years and one activity that really allowed me to embody my warrior is boxing.

The journey of self-awareness is a journey of commitment to learning, action and growth. I have learnt to use my anger as a gift and I place it at the center of my meditation practice if it is an overwhelming feeling on a specific day. This practice allowed me to see that there is a very thin line between Anger and Passion. when I am able to remove the veil of anger, I can see that it is sometimes an expression of a deeper passion for a cause that I may not be honoring. This is another face of anger, as Mahatma Gandhi called it, the "energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust".

The next time you feel anger boiling up to the surface pause and examine where it's coming from. You may be surprised at what you will discover and the creative ways you will find to step into your Warrior.