Unleash Your Inner Dragon: 10 Easy Steps to a More Confident You

By Cameron Smith

“First and foremost, it is essential to be yourself. Increasingly, our culture seems to mock the very idea that there is anything true about the self. Cosmetic surgery, psychopharmaceuticals, and reality TV all conspire to encourage a glossy counterfeit over the genuine article. But it’s no use trying to be something you’re not.

Dare to Be Yourself!”

 — Rhonda Carnegie

Darren woke up, bleary-eyed, his alarm wailing. He hit snooze.

Eight minutes later, Darren woke up again. The extra time had not helped at all. He’d been up until the early hours of the morning re-reading his favourite book, Unleash Your Inner Dragon, 10 Steps to a More Confident You by Rhonda Carnegie. It was one of many, many books he owned that was meant to help him help himself, but didn’t actually seem to help at all. Rhonda had advised that the first step to finding yourself was to write out a list of goals. So far his list read: “1. Get up on time”. So, that was going well. Darren was convinced that if he just found himself, he could start being himself, then he could become a more confident himself, and all his problems would be over. There was just one major complication for Darren, one glaring obstacle he had to face that others didn’t. He was a dragon.

Yes, Darren was a dragon; a big, green, terrifying, scaly, winged creature like in the story books. This was a highly unfortunate and embarrassing aspect of himself that he tried to ignore as much as he possibly could. His life was a constant parade of humiliation, of being pointed at by children on the street, of never being able to find clothes that fit, of being prevented from boarding planes and entering government buildings. Sometimes, he had even been known to accidentally breathe fire. It had happened once in public, on a date. At the time he just wanted to fly far, far away and never return, but he didn’t, because his wings would have ripped apart the very expensive suit he was wearing.

He didn’t get a second date, if you’re interested.

Darren worked as an in-house accountant for a large software company. He had decided on a job in which he could earn a decent living that didn’t involve meeting new people. His brief stint in retail as a teenager had been disastrous. It was not his fault; he was actually a pretty decent and friendly guy. But new people always took a long while to get over the scales and the snout and the size.

In his younger days, Darren had worked as a bouncer at a large inner-city nightclub, but he had eventually grown tired of it. Plus, he felt it was dangerous, on an emotional level, for someone so often barred from entering places to have so much power over other peoples’ entry. Also, he noticed that all the other bouncers were dicks. After that, he spent a year studying to be an actuary, but he couldn’t handle the workload, and most of the figures went over his head, so he dropped out and did accounting instead.

But by and large, Darren couldn’t help feeling that being an accountant wasn’t truly being true to himself. There were no dragon accountants in the story books. True dragons lived in caves, and guarded treasure, and kidnapped fair maidens, and slew unworthy knights. Darren didn’t do any of those things.

He took out his pen and wrote on his list: “2. Distress a Damsel.” Then he got ready for work.

 

“Be assertive! Do not let others walk all over you. Remember: In the animal kingdom the dominant, assertive male is the most powerful one, the leader of the pack. Be the alpha male!”

Darren had the biggest cubicle in his office, a fact which caused no end of consternation and jealousy amongst his colleagues. It was, as his boss made sure each day to make abundantly clear, due to his particular physiological requirements, and not in any way a reflection of his status. It was also the cubicle closest to the door, for OH&S reasons, and surrounded by so many fire extinguishers that Darren couldn’t help but take it personally.

‘A bit late, aren’t you, Spyro?’ smirked Eric, a mediocre fellow accountant who was, in Darren’s frank estimation, the office dickhead. ‘The files are piling up. One for me,’ he grabbed a sheet of paper from the massive stack he was holding. ‘And some for you.’ He dumped the rest of the stack on Darren’s desk and grinned.

Darren, desperately trying to avoid giving credence to the angry-dragon stereotype, tried valiantly to divert his snarl into a pleasant smile, with mixed results. His mind strained as he tried to remember what Rhonda had said about being assertive. Unfortunately, for some reason he couldn’t remember any specific practical advice, only vague platitudes like, “Never be afraid to speak your mind”. He tried to formulate a phrase in his mind that expressed his feelings, appropriate, yet assertive. But somehow all the words and the built up resentment and the righteous anger just swam around in his head, and he couldn’t get a firm grip on any of them. He decided to just open his mouth and see what happened.

‘...Ah,’ was what happened, which would have been embarrassing, except that Darren at that moment realised that Eric had already left the room.

When Darren had first started work, Eric had tried to be his friend. He’d even invited Darren out for beers a few times. But when it became apparent that Darren wouldn’t do any cool party tricks like breathe fire on command, or that he wouldn’t even get into bar fights with people who pissed off Eric, and that he was a much less enthusiastic wingman than you would expect of someone with such large wings, Eric quickly lost interest.

For the rest of their time working together, he had contented himself with breeding resentment among the other drones about Darren’s large office space, a resentment which Darren in turn resented. He was more cramped than any of them, relatively speaking. Darren also had the strong suspicion that Eric deliberately provoked him, trying to get him to do something “cool”, like go crazy and start smashing things.

Darren didn’t often fantasise about barrelling through the office, scorching the ground on which they walked, and stripping the flesh off a man’s bones one by one with his incisors, but when he did, as he seemed to be doing with increasing frequency as his work week progressed, it was always when Eric was around.

Instead, he wrote a strongly worded e-mail to HR about workplace harassment. He then deleted the stronger words, and saved the e-mail to drafts. There. He felt better already.

Suddenly, he slapped his forehead in exasperation. That was the word he’d been looking for! It always comes to you as soon as the moment’s passed. He said it out loud, just for practice in case this happened again.

“No.”

 

“Be confident. Don’t preoccupy yourself about what others think of you. There will always be people who don’t like you; screw them! Remember what Raymond Hull once said: "He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away!"

“Remember that some people are jealous, afraid, or overwhelmed when a person becomes more enlightened than they are. Give these people space and compassion, and they may come around in time. If they don't, who cares? You don't need them anyway!”

On his way home, the petrol light on Darren’s car came on. He had had to substantially modify the car when he bought it to suit his particular needs, taking out the back seat, making a tail hole, and raising the ceiling considerably. Now, his head still brushed against the ceiling when he drove, and he couldn’t fit into the supermarket car park. He had to park on the street outside, which was murder, and even if he did find a spot they all had a fifteen minute limit, and it was always at least a ten minute walk to the shop. It all seemed hardly worth the hassle. Just one more example of the entrenched discrimination he faced every day. He thought about writing an email to the discrimination commissioner.

Anyway, he wasn't sure if the modifications made the car less fuel efficient, but he wouldn’t be surprised.

He sighed as he pulled into the petrol station. He hated them. People always looked so terrified to see him. In reality, he was more careful about safety than most. He even turned off his mobile phone, like the sign said to, and nobody does that.

There was a lady at the opposite pump with a car full of screaming kids, jabbering away on her phone as she filled up. Darren imagined she wouldn’t appreciate being told what a risk to the public she was being by an enormous fire-breathing dragon.

Yeah, he hated everything about getting petrol. Of all the stupid, mundane experiences of his week, getting petrol was the worst. Although, there was one upside. An upside, he hoped it wasn't too creepy to have noticed, who worked at the station Wednesday to Friday from 4pm, and the night shift on weekends.

 

“Be dominant! An alpha male doesn't only lead his friends, but he also attracts the attention of women more than any other type of male. Women may claim to be civilized but remember: humans are animals too. Don’t be afraid to let your animal instincts out!”

Emily was the most beautiful girl you could imagine. With her fair skin, and dark, flowing hair, she looked like she’d just walked off the set of a shampoo commercial.

Darren had loved her since the moment he first saw her, eighteen months ago when he swapped petrol stations after a teenage cashier had made a rude comment about his teeth.

Quite often, when he was feeling lonely, or lying in bed remembering all the things he had wanted to be, or waiting for a bus, or being yelled at by his co-workers, or gazing wistfully at the sunset, he would imagine their life together. They would be sitting in a modest but comfortable seaside home, he would be watching as Emily taught their two daughters to paint their nails. She would look up and their eyes would meet, two lovers sharing a private moment in the sun.

Not that he really had anything to base these fantasies on. Truth be told, Darren had never had a particularly spectacular, or particularly existent, love life. It wasn’t entirely his fault; he had been sent very confusing messages by society for all his life. In primary school, all the picture books he read suggested that he would meet a nice princess, and they would live together in happiness until a brave knight mercilessly slaughtered him and carried her off to be his wife. Then, as his critical literacy skills grew, he realised how offensive that was, to both dragons and women, and he made a point to stop reading such nonsense.

In high school, his biology teacher had made it very clear how the birds and the bees worked: not with each other. Darren had never counted his chromosomes, but he spent the next few years thinking he could only be happy if he could find another dragon.

Finally, after some very confusing feelings towards his Year 11 maths teacher, he had read in a Rhonda Carnegie book that love was a miracle that could be nurtured, and would grow like a red rose in any two people, at any time, no matter what, and that made him feel nice. Although, that book had also said that he would be inundated with romantic offers at the waning of the moon, due to his Aquarian birth date, and that had turned out to be wholly inaccurate.

But, when it came down to it, coming to terms with his own particular sexual preferences didn’t really help him much. Once, at a uni party he went to, he managed to pick up a stunner, Eleanor Jaggs, who rode a motorbike and had her nose pierced. When she asked him how a man with a protruding snout and two sharp rows of fangs made out, he was totally stumped. After his embarrassing lack of knowledge about the practicalities of even the most basic of intimate acts, she very quickly lost interest.

Since then he had spent a lot, in fact an indecent amount of time thinking about and researching the logistics of all sorts of intimate acts, always remembering to delete his internet history afterwards, of course. And now he was pretty across the whole thing, at least in theory.

But that didn’t change the awkward fact that in 27 years of life, Darren had never had a proper girlfriend. But, as Rhonda says, “You can’t change your life, until you change yourself”.

He strutted towards the counter like a rooster who had just been beaten up by another, manlier rooster, trying to remember everything Rhonda had ever said about making yourself more attractive to the ladies. Be yourself, but be an animal, be protective, be confident, but not creepy. He tried to summon his inner animal spirit, his innate, primal charm and opened his mouth to let it all out, but just at that moment Emily smiled at him and ruined everything.

“Ah...number 7,” he said, sounding not in the slightest like an animal.

She smiled. “$74.20.” she said, the warmth of her breath brushing Darren’s mouth as she spoke, or maybe that was the air conditioning. Either way, it made him woozy.

He got out his wallet, and stared blankly at it. His mind was racing, but at the same time, it seemed empty. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was pretty sure this was not how it was meant to go. He could hear nothing but the blood pounding in his ears. He tried to let his animal brain take over. Millions of years of dragon evolution pulsed through his body, chemicals in his brain releasing pent up hormones, heart beating faster than it ever had, brain fighting for control over his animal instinct. In his mind he was finally letting it all out, all the repression and frustration. He was stretching out his wings, tensing his entire body, and roaring, blasting the room with sound.

He stopped, and then took a breath. He opened his mouth, hoping that something charming and eloquent and endearing would just fall out. It was a strategy he employed frequently, although, it had yet to work.

Suddenly, a high pitched scream pierced the air around him. That didn’t usually happen. He closed his mouth, but the screaming didn’t stop. Instead, another, higher pitched wailing began, and the room began to flash red. That couldn’t be good. Darren, being a horrific monster, was well versed in fire alarms, and could identify the brand by sound. But this was different.

For a moment, Darren considered what it would be like to die in a freak petrol explosion. As his whole life flashed before his eyes, he wondered if dying might be a slight improvement for him. Then, he noticed Emily. Poor Emily, screaming and terrified, beautiful and vulnerable, and he immediately snapped out of it.

Not just his suicidal stupor, but his entrenched self-pity, his lifetime of doubt and anxiety, just snapped out of him in an instant, as though it had never existed, and suddenly, for the first time in his life, he knew exactly what he had to do.

In a single motion of unparalleled grace, Darren leapt over the counter, cradled Emily in his arms as he pulled her under the counter, stretching out his enormous form, protecting every inch of her soft skin with his scaly frame, just at the exact moment an enormous fireball did not engulf them both.

He held his breath. His muscles tensed. His ears pricked up. He could still faintly hear screaming coming from somewhere, but everything else was quiet. Then, it hit. Suddenly his entire body was on fire, seemingly burning through his skin right down to his bones. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever experienced, as he twitched and flicked uncontrollably, unintentionally letting go of his beautiful charge as he spasmed across the floor.

Then it was over. He looked over at Emily, still screaming and shaking, but unhurt. He breathed out. With great effort, he raised his head up to see what was left of the building. The roof hadn’t caved in, which was good. Actually, the counter didn’t seem charred at all. He stood up, entirely confused, as he noticed the entire building was fine, everything was exactly the same, apart from the crowd of people staring at him, white faced. A security guard, stood defiantly in front of him, about two metres away, Taser still in hand.

“Do. Not. Move.”

Darren looked at him, totally dumbfounded. Then he looked down at Emily, hands clutching her face, shivering, her screams faded to a dull but incessant whimper. A horrible, sickening, unwanted dawning of realisation fell on him as he slumped back onto the ground. He suddenly didn’t feel like a hero. Nor did he feel like an alpha male. And he certainly didn’t feel like a dragon.

 

“At the end of the day, the important thing to remember is that you are perfect just the way you are. Don’t change a thing! And whatever you do, don’t try to be somebody you’re not. As they say, it’s in your DNA!”

Darren pulled into his driveway and got out of his car, his heart still beating fast. The police sergeant had been very understanding. He had been awarded the extra title of Dragon Commissioner when Darren had moved to town, and it was a duty he took to with great pride. It hadn’t taken long for him to arrive and calm everyone down, convince them it was all a misunderstanding, that there was never any danger, and to go about their business. He admonished Darren, of course, for scaring everybody. He didn’t think to admonish the idiot who pulled the alarm in a crowded petrol station. Nobody thought to apologise to Darren. He had been terrified. He had been tasered, for God’s sake. Didn’t anybody think that maybe the whole situation was everybody else’s fault, not his?

He had just reached his garden gate when his front door opened with a bang. Two blurry figures raced out, stopped in their tracks when they saw him, tried to flee in terror to the backyard, found it blocked by a sturdy and high garden wall, and frantically dived behind some bushes.

Darren sighed. He was not in the mood. It was the third time that month that some young lads from town had broken into his house. He’d been meaning to install a security system for months, but hadn’t got around to it. Frankly, he was astonished that a seven foot tall, fire breathing dragon would need a piece of plastic that made a loud noise to stop people going into his house. But, for some reason, kids these days were so damn brave.

He knew what they were after, of course. Most dragons in story books lived in caves and slept on piles of gold and jewels, waking up only to scare away any brave knights looking for untold riches. Darren, of course, knew it would be highly uncomfortable, not to mention impractical, to sleep on piles of treasure, and quite sensibly slept on a bed. He kept his treasure in the spare room. He hated conforming to outdated stereotypes, but he was too good of an accountant to underestimate the value of tangible goods in this volatile economy.

He knew exactly where the intruders were. He could smell them. One was still cowering behind some bushes, the other was taking his chances face down in the veggie patch, hoping that if he lay flat and still and silent he wouldn’t be found.

Darren sighed. Most dragons in story books would stretch out to their full height, unsheathe their claws, blast out an unholy roar, scorch the surrounds with fire, and let the bones of intruders strewn about the mouth of their caves serve as a warning to others. Darren, of course, had other methods.

He went inside and turned on the sprinkler. That should do it.

He then went around the house and gathered up all of his books, from The 7 Habits of People who are Just Better than You, to The Secret 2: Be Attractive and put them in a pile in his sink. He placed Unleashing your Inner Dragon right on the top, along with his pathetically short list of goals. He took a big breath, then paused. He got out a pen and put a big, satisfying, red line through his checklist item “2. Distress a Damsel”. Then, he incinerated them all.

Of course he was himself. He was beginning to wonder how on earth it was possible for anyone to not be who they are. It didn’t even make sense. He turned on the tap, watching as the last charring embers were extinguished. Then he made himself a nice cup of tea and sat down to watch Oprah.