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Creative Anger

By Peter Lloyd

I think I could find a thousand quotes, adages, and other so-called quips of wisdom that would discourage you from resorting to anger—ever. But they’re all wrong. Anger can be used to your creative advantage.

Anger is one of the Seven Creative Juices and deserves a good deal more respect. Out of control, it will destroy you. Under the control of your creative genius, anger can drive you to create, invent, and innovate in ways that right wrongs, establish justice, and comfort the afflicted.

Dr. Amy Baxter got mad, she says. The pediatric emergency department physician and pain expert decided not to settle for the kind of pain and horror her own four-year-old endured. “As a pediatrician, if I couldn’t protect my own kid, who could?” she wrote in one of CEO Blog Nation’s Why Did You Start Your Business? posts.

So she invented Buzzy, the personal pain control device that looks like a big bee but makes injections and other otherwise painful medical procedures float like a butterfly.

She refused to settle for the routine assumption of no pain no gain. Her website tells stories and shows videos of kids and adults who use Buzzy to confuse their nervous systems by making it concentrate on the ice-filled, vibrating device while they receive shots, give blood, receive dental treatments, or undergo other slightly painful medical procedures such as having a splinter removed.

You may have been taught to accept pain and tough it out. You may have been advised to never let yourself get mad. In contrast the Creative Juice of Anger moved Dr. Amy to disagree with both of these conventional postures when it came to her child. Now many children will benefit from her anger-inspired invention.

If it pains you to think of this kind of response as anger, call it righteous indignation. But whatever you call it, use it.

See also:

• The Value of Anger A History of Emotions

Peter Lloyd has helped major consumer-package-goods companies generate new-product ideas for more than a decade. Among his favorites contributions to consumers—Heinz Green Ketchup.

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