The Tiger Has Roared. What Will You Do?
Think of an animal that roars.
You thought of a lion, didn’t you? Nearly everybody does.
Roaring lions are etched into our collective consciousness. They show up everywhere in popular culture.
Lions are not the only big cats that can roar, though. Tigers, leopards, and jaguars all have impressive roars. But there’s something particularly bone-chilling about the tiger’s roar.
In fact, during the production of Disney’s animated classic, The Lion King, the audio engineers felt that the lion roars they had recorded didn’t sound powerful enough. They replaced them with tiger roars instead.
A tiger’s roar is nearly as loud as a jet engine and can be heard two miles away. At 114 decibels, the roar of an adult tiger nearly crosses the threshold of pain and comes within spitting distance of levels that can cause permanent hearing loss.
Scientists who study tigers have observed that a tiger’s roar has a paralyzing effect on prey. The infrasounds a tiger can generate have been found to literally ‘scare’ some animals to death.
But while a tiger’s roar has the power to immobilize prey, tigers don’t typically use their roar when hunting. Like all the big cats, tigers stalk and pounce on their victims. Roaring runs the risk of alerting prey to their presence and scaring them away. Scientists have found that tigers roar when they are challenged, threatened, or afraid.
For the most part, tigers roar at other tigers.
The ‘tiger’ has roared at all of us.
Visit any grocery store these days and you can see it in people’s eyes: they’re filled with depression, anxiety, and despair. Most people are absolutely paralyzed by fear.
But don’t forget why the tiger roars.
The tiger roars when it has met its match.
Standing still and giving into fear is what prey does.
Do you know what tigers do when another tiger roars at them?
They roar back.
Then, they stand up on their hind legs and lunge forward with every ounce of energy they possess.
Now’s the time to do the same. Everyone has a tiger in front of them right now. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate who and what we are; to take action while others quiver in fear.
For some, that may mean making more phone calls or sending more emails to drive new sales. For others, that may mean getting creative and trying different approaches to keep their business afloat in this challenging environment. And for many, it may mean sending out twice as many resumes and Linkedin messages to secure employment.
Another interesting thing about tigers is that they don’t like it when people look them in the eye.
In 1989, villagers in India were getting killed by wild Bengal tigers daily. Guns, traps, and even explosives weren’t working — the attacks persisted.
After months of attempts to solve the problem, a curious student made a fascinating discovery: tigers only seemed to attack when they felt they weren’t being watched.
People started being more vigilant — never showing their backs to the jungle — ready to stare down any tigers that came their way. Some even started making cheap human masks and wearing them on the backs of their heads. For three years straight, no villagers were killed by tigers except those that either refused to wear the masks or had taken them off.
When we’re in the middle of serious problems, it can be tempting to do nothing. Nobody expects much from us when we’re struggling. It can even be hard to expect anything of ourselves. Avoiding or ignoring our problems altogether can seem like the better path.
But it’s precisely at these moments, when the chips are down and we’ve taken a few licks, that we need to confront our problems head-on and fight the hardest.
We tend to underestimate ourselves. The truth is that we’re all so much more capable than we give ourselves credit for. It’s amazing how much we can accomplish through unrelenting, concentrated effort. Our problems may not retreat completely the way those Bengals did in the 80s, but we can make measurable progress. Maybe we can only make things 1% better. But 1% better, every day, is 37 times better over the course of a year. Big results come from small, but consistent actions.
The tiger has roared.
We can’t change that and it does no good to wish things were different. Now is not the time to allow ourselves to be frozen by fear. There is only one sensible way to respond.
Look that tiger right in the eye and roar back.
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