The Flip Side of Workaholism: Pursuit of the Elusive Free Time
For me, this is the year to learn how to take the pressure off myself. Having time off over the winter break revealed to me how tired I am. And I don’t mean the kind of tired one feels after grueling physical labor. I mean tired from feeling the pressure of stressing myself out through unconsciously buying into my fear and anxiety.
I started to see how I have created the new economy of time. Rather than fantasizing over having more money, I am now fantasizing about having more time: more time to relax, more time for myself, more time to exercise, more time with my family, more time with friends, more time to travel. I have created the illusion that if I just had more time then I would be happier. I would be more comfortable. Life would be more pleasurable.
I go into reveries of peace, tranquility, and quiet, and think about how to change my life to get more of those experiences, but the truth is I would be no different than the lottery winner who is bankrupt in five years after winning 100 million dollars. Even if I won the lottery of time, with my current thinking and understanding, I would find a way to fill up my time and stress myself out. I feel rushed now, and I would feel rushed then. The question is, how do I shift my understanding so that it no longer makes sense to have a habitual pattern of pressuring myself? How do I not believe the voice of doom in my head telling me that if I don’t work hard my world will fall apart? How do I see my fearful thinking as illusion and experience the peace and tranquility that is present? How do I experientially know the only time is now so I can feel the present moment more intimately and deeply?
The solution is actually quite simple. I am the only one who makes my irrational thoughts feel credible in the moment. I am the one pressuring myself to do more and achieve more. I am the one bullying myself to get just one more thing done. I am the one buying into my anxious and fearful thoughts and relating to them as if they are real. Unfortunately, when I am doing that, I am often not aware that is what I am doing. I am most likely unconsciously reacting to my emotional experience of pressure and discomfort. Rather than pausing and reflecting on what is happening, I am cow-towing to my fear to get a brief reprieve from the pressure before the next impulse to do more comes along.
My current mid-life crisis is to realize that just as I am addicted to doing. I am also addicted to not doing. As I approach 50, instead of buying a corvette, or falling in love with a 20-year-old, my seduction is nothing — doing nothing. Like either of the other two options, I am sure there would be a honeymoon period of loosing myself in the nothingness, but this would be temporary, then the thoughts would come back.
The real opportunity as I see it, is to fully accept my craving for more time. See it as just another thought that I don’t need to do anything about. Yes, the craving feels uncomfortable, but it will pass. My personal discomfort is not something to get worked up about. Feeling good all of the time is not a reasonable goal. When I try to pursue it, all I do is waste my energy on a utopian fantasy and wear myself out.
I don’t need to be deeply present all the time. I don’t need to always be in the flow and experiencing the oneness of all existence. Life is not one peak experience that only keeps getting better. The beauty of life is in the mosaic of experience that includes all of the human emotions from bliss to piss.
So that is where the real pressure comes off. Surrendering to what is — no matter what — is the peace. Not expending energy to try to make myself feel more comfortable when my ego gets all worked up about needing more pleasure — is the shift. I don’t need to abandon my life, my work, or my family. Instead, I can embrace where I am on this journey, have compassion for my frazzled self, be amused by my neurotic behaviors, and know that no matter how much I feel I need to compulsively do, no matter how tired I am, no matter how anxious I get, no matter how much pressure I put on myself, my true nature does not care. My ego might crave more comfort, and think it will come in the form of more time, but my Authentic Self doesn’t need it. Now that is a relief!
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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