How to turn anger into insight

A couple of weeks ago I felt angry. I mean really angry, rage seemed to be an appropriate word.

I’m going to explain how I turned this into a useful insight and reminded me of a lesson or two that I had forgotten. I hope that this may be of use the next time you’re feeling angry or even rage.

I was at the bank dealing with issues arising from some process or training issue when I felt the rage boiling up. I am only too aware from my many years in banking how things can go wrong and the customer ends up dealing with these issues and having to become expert in the bank processes.

It does tend to wind me up because of that inside knowledge.

I noticed how angry I felt and was actually quite shocked. I kept it to myself which is good but knew that there was something I needed to learn from this.

Fairly quickly I realised that the fear that was behind the anger (as there always is) was my anxiety that I would find myself back in banking or the large corporate world where this craziness exists. I have chosen not to waste my energy in such places in any more but there is that fear that I would be ‘forced’ to work there again due to financial pressures.

This wasn’t a great insight because the fear was unfounded — there was no financial pressure that was likely to make this…