An Attorney Transformed: Len Scheff Transforms His Anger
It’s one of those stories that can help define a life, although the hero of this one says it was just part of a progression. S. Leonard Scheff had already been “messing around with Buddhism for years” when he handled quite a bit of legal work to help facilitate the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tucson, Arizona, in 1993. So, he figures, he was probably already receptive to the message His Holiness presented. At the same time, though, getting that message to hit home took another, less kindly teacher.
A Tucson attorney who specializes in real estate law, Scheff received a special honor as a thank-you for all his help: a front-and-center seat during the Dalai Lama’s four-day teaching. The problem was, he felt he couldn’t miss a session or do something as ungracious as falling asleep because he didn’t want to offend his Holiness (although Scheff suspected he probably wouldn’t mind) or, worse, the people who had arranged for his seat.
As the teaching went on, though, he found himself becoming even more uneasy with the lessons themselves, in which His Holiness frequently suggested that people would be much better off if they gave up their anger. This was much more serious than his fear of dozing off; this unease flowed from Scheff’s deepest sense of self, from how he defined himself as a person and an attorney, and it gnawed at him. While he believed the Dalai Lama to be “a really nice man,” he says, “if he thought I was going to give up anger, he was crazy.”
The day after the last teaching session, the unsettling contradiction of the Dalai Lama’s peaceful words and Scheff’s own beliefs about anger had not yet dissipated. As he drove through Tucson, another car pulled a little too close to him, so Scheff honked his horn in warning. In return, from the other driver’s rolled-down window came “the digital sign of disrespect held high in the air.” Scheff’s immediate reaction was a desire to ram the other car, or at least roll down his window and shout an insult. But something clicked in his consciousness before he did either: Maybe he should try putting into practice what the Dalai Lama had been trying to teach him. After all, His Holiness had certainly dealt with events much more anger-inducing than this one. So Scheff asked himself what had made him angry with this vehicular teacher. In an instant, he knew.
“I wanted respect from this total stranger,” he explains. “It was me who gave this insult its meaning. And I started laughing at myself.”
Immediately, he realized how much better it felt to laugh than to be angry. “I was hooked,” he says.
This was the beginning of a new definition of life for him, and he set about conscientiously applying within himself the Dalai Lama’s teachings about anger. But he eventually realized there was a great need for these teachings within the legal community, so he expanded his individual work in order to help others in the same unsteady boat. He created a seminar titled “Transforming Anger,” which he presents to lawyers, judges, and anyone else willing to listen.
A native of Texas, Scheff came to Tucson in 1949. He’s resided there in the desert ever since, with the exception of time spent attending Boalt School of Law at Berkeley. He’s not sure why he chose the law as a career, except to say “it seemed very clear that I was going to be a lawyer.” His father was a real estate agent in Tucson and referred a lot of clients to him when he began his practice there. So he specialized in real estate law, which he still practices today, at age 73.
Until that insightful, laughing moment in his car in 1993, Scheff had somehow suspected that anger wasn’t the best strategy to make his point or to get his clients what they asked him to get, but it was the only way he knew. “It was a source of distress, but I didn’t know it,” he says.
Tall and lanky, with thinning gray hair and a slight forward stoop, Scheff is unpretentious, wearing brown running shoes with light-colored laces to the office. He radiates a solid calmness, and it seems as if nothing could ruffle him. He’s a great punster, too. For example, back in 1993 when he was dealing with the lawyer for His Holiness the Dalai Lama while working on the Tucson visit, he says he asked if the lawyer was the “Loop-holey-ness.”
Once, he was addicted to anger, as are many attorneys. Maybe he even took pride in his aggressiveness, as men are encouraged to do, and he did believe that anger was a permanent part of his personality. But in that one instant in his car, he saw it didn’t have to be.
“We define ourselves as having a personality,” he says, “so we create this fiction, which, by and large, is an impediment.”
Why a fiction? Because our thoughts about how we are or how we think we need to act stem from our reactions to innumerable past experiences, which become physically patterned in our brains. These patterns then become an automatic function, a default, that reappear in the presence of the right stimulus. The problem is, the original stimulus could be 10 or 15 or 40 years old and totally inappropriate for the current situation. In Scheff’s case, he had somehow picked up anger along the way and carried it so tightly that it became his default. It was like the tree growing by the seashore where the wind always blows, he says. The tree is bent over, and even if the wind stops, the tree remains bent.
Fortunately, the Dalai Lama taught Scheff that what is learned can be unlearned. Unlike trees, we humans can stand straight up if we choose. While anger is part of the standard package of human emotions, we always have a choice about what to do with it when it arises.
Before Scheff chose to look at his options, “I have the feeling that I did a lot of damage to my clients,” he explains. “One thing I did notice was that I very seldom got referrals from other attorneys. Obviously, they thought I was a jerk. A smart jerk, but a jerk nonetheless.
“Anger has a lot of coattails,” he continues, “and one of them is the need to reform people to make them behave right. I was always telling people how it should be.”
Another one is that we can come to believe that acting out of anger defines us, much as we can believe the car we drive or the clothes we wear define us. Many people believe that acting in anger is automatic and that they have no control over it. People who are addicted to anger may welcome occasions to be angry, Scheff says, or even seek out those occasions.
He did, once upon a time. But he’s profoundly changed.
He understands that anger and aggression don’t equal effectiveness in the courtroom, or anywhere else. In fact, an angry person, like the scorch-and-burn attorney, is much less likely to be effective.
“When you’re angry, your options narrow profoundly,” he explains. “When you’re angry, you either want revenge or to become a martyr. And so you don’t examine options. You also close down the other person when you’re angry.”
Married for nearly 40 years, Scheff admits that his wife, Sue, almost left him because of his anger. “I wouldn’t still be married if I hadn’t made these changes in myself,” he says.
His legal practice has also benefited. He now receives many referrals both from a “devoted clientele” and colleagues who appreciate him.
Scheff tells a story from his practice to illustrate an option he chose when faced with an irate U.S. attorney from Cleveland—another anger junkie. This attorney called him one day about a case and, in the course of a 15-minute rant, insulted and threatened him numerous times.
“He finally ran out of steam,” says Scheff, “and then he said, ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ I said, ‘I’m very sorry you’re distressed.’ There was an incredibly long silence. He’s been very nice to me ever since.”
There is never anything we need to be angry about, says Scheff. Never. Not even in the case of the worst injustice.
“You need to deal with the injustice, but if you’re angry, you limit your choices,” he says.
Again, he tells a story to illustrate.
A man told Scheff about an incident he had witnessed in a parking lot. An elderly woman was slowly maneuvering her car into a parking space as an impatient, young male driver was trying to get by her, unsuccessfully. Once she had parked her car and gotten out, the young man jumped out of his vehicle and came over to her, screaming and venting his anger on the shocked woman. The poor woman was “shaking like a leaf,” the man told Scheff. “I knew I should do something. I was so angry, all I could think of doing was slugging him.”
So Scheff asked the man to close his eyes and mentally take himself back to the scene. “But instead of focusing on him, focus on her,” he suggested.
In a minute, the man opened his eyes and said, “I just should have gone over and stood next to her.”
Scheff’s three-hour Transforming Anger workshop isn’t some theoretical, let’s-just-love-everyone kind of event; neither do participants whack anything with plastic bats. Instead, at this time when they are not gripped by anger, they are asked to examine their long-held beliefs about it, examine their options, and investigate specific tools to deal with it.
Anger, he explains, is the result of an unmet demand. And we can choose how to respond, particularly when we understand the four hypotheses about anger, which form the basis of the workshop:
• Anger is almost always a destructive emotion.
• The first person damaged by your anger is you.
• You can, if you choose, reduce the amount of anger in your life.
• As you reduce the amount of anger, your quality of life improves.
Participants are not required—or even asked—to accept any of these hypotheses as true. Instead, Scheff asks them to experiment with them, using examples of anger from their own lives, to see if the process might be true for them. If so, he would like them to continue experimenting after the workshop.
The workshop has affected many people in positive ways, according to Scheff. Many people have told him later how he has changed their lives. But he’s a little worried about that.
“Nothing I bring to this workshop isn’t out there, available,” he says, “and if people are living these painful, ineffective existences, and they can be changed in three hours, something is really, basically wrong.”
At the same time, he admits, “It’s very gratifying, after years of being a hostile lawyer, to be a healer.”
It’s good to let go of anger. First of all, you feel better. “It’s unpleasant to be angry,” he says. “That doesn’t need any proof, but it needs to be said out loud. And you have more choices. And the love that’s out there comes in instead of being kept out.”
On the other hand, hanging on to your anger is like this, he says: “You get up and get dressed, and you get your tie adjusted or your jewelry, and you’re all ready to go. But just before you go, you pick up a huge potted plant, and you carry it with you all day. And you wonder why you have trouble getting around and getting things done and getting through doors.”
Scheff hopes he can make a contribution to society with his workshops and by his own example, admitting that might sound “a little grandiose. But there’s a saying: ‘To a carpenter with a hammer, all the world’s a nail.’ I see all the world’s problems in terms of being angry.”
That driver that flashed Scheff the finger back in 1993 should look out, though. Scheff would love to give him a hug in thanks for bestowing such a great gift on him.
For more information about Leonard Scheff’s Transforming Anger workshops, please go to www.transforminganger.com.
Barbara Stahura is a freelance writer in Tucson. Her Web site is www.clariticom.com.
