Don’t be Sad, Get Mad: Your Catalyst to Action

I was catching up with an old friend and heard his story about some traumatic family issues he was facing. He ended up literally spending all his time at work, taking any project that came up and drowning himself in work. 

We all face problems at home, with our families and personal lives. It’s normal. Family is both a source of joy but also one of immense pain sometimes. But it’s how you deal with it. I find for the driven, they transmute that pain into action. Frenetic action. 

There is this scene in the excellent Brazilian movie “Elite Squad 2” about the BOPE elite military police force, where the lead character Colonel Nascimento facing massive problems at home, estranged from his son and hated by his ex-wife, takes this into his work crushing & killing drug gangs. 

“I became a workaholic. Nothing mattered more to me than my job. To people like me, war is medicine. War keeps the mind busy. Pressure builds at home? I release it in the streets.”

Many type-A men do some form of this. But I don’t think this is particularly healthy in the long run. Yet it certainly is a very effective way to drive your career and life forward in a big way. Transfiguring that sadness and pain into something productive. To do something in a world where most people quit, mope or do nothing.

Arnold Schwarzenegger had a familiar philosophy: “As my father used to say “As long as you concentrate on being useful, rather than “How do i feel today?; It doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna help anything anyway. “So you can feel sh-tty, you can feel happy,” the world is not going to change so let’s get going.”

“Stay busy. Stay useful.”