Dear Diary,
In professional activity I periodically encounter a situation that somewhat annoys me. As long as I know the task queue trajectory seven steps ahead, with a smile, humming some pleasant melody, completed tasks and their fragments fly aside like wood shavings. But it’s enough to march up to the point where the next step is unknown, when that step has seven possible variants and to choose the most suitable one you need to sit down and try them all, the pandemonium begins. You grab one, think about another, doubt whether you chose the right order for those seven experiments, doubt yourself in general, cause yourself unspeakable tension, as a result of which in a rather short time you burn through all available energy and, not withstanding the loads, the tungsten filament running from your left ear to your right stops emitting blinding light by snapping and releasing a modest helpless “pop”. That’s it, as a specialist in your field for the remaining part of the day you’ve become a vegetable. What’s more – a very, very hungry vegetable – the organism rather tangibly strikes through physiology with a demand to recover the squandered energy and toward the refrigerator you march as if you haven’t opened it in a good two weeks. With all the consequences that follow for the scales, of course :-)
I perfectly understand that no external factor is to blame for this, that all that’s needed is to slightly adjust the processes in my inner little world – solder the corresponding little wires, turn the necessary little screws. Therefore I resort to a tried and true method – if you’re looking for some answer, simply click the mouse on the first YouTube video you come across (or grab the first book at hand), and you’ll find it there. And so I do – a smart head on screen lets slip that no worrying that afflicts us is frightening as long as our great inner worrier doesn’t join it, burrowing into every experience or sensation with its pitiful “this isn’t just a feeling – this is ME feeling! And strongly!” All clear enough, pondered for years, meditated on and described in a pile of essays. But how do learn to trip him up, how to slam the inner door in his face?
With these thoughts I lie down. In the morning I awake in a divine, even deafening inner silence. A wonderful space for inner experiments and discoveries – so lazily turning over to the other side I simply try to worry. About nothing. Of course it doesn’t work. Then I try to describe myself in thoughts. And worrying works! All our worrying, and with it the ever-returning worrier, is inseparable from our inner habit of describing both ourselves and the world surrounding us. A person lacks nothing as long as in their head they don’t establish the fact “I am the one who lacks”, a person is happy as long as in their head they don’t establish the fact “I am very, very unhappy”. And the world around is quite beautiful as long as you don’t begin establishing how ugly, gray, cold and unfair it is. So in professional work too, it turns out, one needs to practice even more strongly the ability to chop tasks without immersing in descriptions of oneself, as at that moment a somewhat unsuccessful problem-solver, simultaneously not summoning a crowd of energy-instantly-sucking worries.
Try it. Don’t stop thoughts, don’t sit in a lotus pose, don’t regulate breathing or heart work – simply for a few moments explain nothing to yourself, don’t describe yourself or the world surrounding you. Well then? Are you still unhappy? Do you still lack something? Here the smile appears remembering a certain social network community where it’s customary, hiding behind an anonymous mask, to provide broad descriptions of oneself and then from other members collect advice on how to change, adorn and improve that description so it brings somewhat lighter feelings than the current ones. If I’m not mistaken, that process even has a name – psychology :-)
Have a meaningful weekend! :-)
