An old riding instructor of mine laughed when I told him that I was writing a book.

I don't mean one of those "Oh, what a cute little dream for a kid," chuckles, no-- I mean a straight-up Disney-villain guffaw. "Good luck," I remember him saying, as he grinned down at me from the back of his horse, like a condescending, mounted policeman: "You could never do that."

He then dug his spurs into the side of his horse and trotted off with his head held high, like he had just done me some sort of service by killing any shred of confidence my inferiority-complex-suffering 16-year-old self had.

The thing was, though, he didn't do that, kill my confidence forever. But he did do me a service; he pissed me the heck off. So I finished my first draft by the time I was 18, signed a publishing contract at age 20, and am now firmly on my way to getting my book onto the shelves. My childhood dream come true.

Let me introduce you to the motivating power of anger, my friend, because it will change your life.

If you're like any other person on the planet, you've met with people like my horse trainer -- those who, directly or indirectly, want to pull you away from your goals, be it for their idea of what's best for you or some twisted power-dynamic thing they've got going on. And if you're like me, you've probably been scared by those people, because they feed that insecure part of you that all of us have, that part that sits on a throne in the corner of your head and snarks about absolutely every reason why you can't do something. Not strong enough, not smart enough, not dedicated enough, whatever. It's got ideas from here to Timbuktu, and it can drag your ego there and back five times over.

Those ideas, though no matter what in your life tries to feed them -- they're powerless in the face of enough of your anger. If you're mad enough about something or at someone, you'll do everything in your power to piss them off. If achieving one of your longtime goals just happens to piss them off -- there's your loophole. There's where your anger at that person is a wonderful, motivating thing.

Lots of people are scared of feeling mad; I know I was, up until around 19 when I realized I'd implode if I didn't start to deal with all the anger I'd internalized from my six-something years of psychological and verbal abuse. Anger is unbridled, destructive, and if you're not careful, it can spread into completely unrelated aspects of your life. It can grow out of control and completely posses you, almost like a parasite.

But it's the very things that make anger so dangerous that also make it so powerful. Let anger be destructive -- let it destroy the idea that you aren't enough for your goals. Let it be unbridled -- every time you fail, let the memory of that person telling you you can't spur you forward again.

And if you let it spread the right way, into a passion towards your goals, it will no longer be a parasite, but instead your very best friend.