I have a lot of natural calmness.  I think it was just one of those gifts that was placed in me when at the moment of my conception.   I don’t think it has a lot to do with genetics or environment.   It is what helps me do a lot of the inner dream work with people.     However,  I have recently had to come face to face with a negative calming aspect in myself that I am saying good by to.  This is the kind of forced inner calm to prevent other people’s anger.    I was fired three times in my education career, each time traumatic, and each time making me go to the forced calm as a kind of ego protection so that I wouldn’t be fired again.

What seems to happen internally which seems to be the common pattern is that I imagine  a big negative consequence is going to happen if I put myself out there in an enthusiastic manner.  Someone is going to get jealous and then angry and then down I go.  My historic reaction from my ego was to go into a calm place that tried not to disturb the possibility of someone else’s angry tendencies.   I got fearful of someone else’s anger.

It is a pretty simple fix for me now that it has come up.   Instead of imagining their anger and the consequences and then tensing up and going to the calm, do nothing place,  the process is to see what my true self really wants to do in terms of goals, ignore the anger of others and the consequences, and go for it.    How can I ignore the anger after all of those firings?   Here’s how.   When I go back over my history,  I see that each time I was fired my next job paid me nearly double of the previous job.   It was like the firings were an invitation to a higher salary.

Anger on the part of others was just a manipulative, controlling technique for the other side to get me to line up with what they wanted.   When I just ignore it now, and see where I am going and get enthusiastic about it, everything seems to work.    The ignoring part is not so easy because being fired is a real risk.    I am not saying that one needs to be rebellious or disobedient to authority to get to where the enthusiasm is.  That is a dark path that leads nowhere but fighting and wars.   What works is to maintain very high levels of enthusiastic behaviors by going for true goals.     It doesn’t require ignoring authority. It requires ignoring anger.  There is a big difference even though the two are often living in the same place.   Anger is what needs to be ignored, not authority.

So the practice is to be aware of when I am fearful of someone’s anger,  see that it makes me calm down and do less,  and then ignore the anger and go for the enthusiasm instead, because the enthusiasm is the engine that will drive the achievement of the goals.   Enthusiasm is up energy and that is what we all need.