Excuse me, I need a place to store or ponder some thoughts...
Yesterday morning at work, I was really stressed out. Let me put some context in first. I have been reading the books and thinkings of Anthony De Mello and he says that our suffering comes from our "programming". Like the stress we have, they do not come from the actual situation, but from the person who is experiencing the stress.
So my Singapore upbringing (whether from school, work, church) and own work experience told me that when you organize an event, you have to make it as perfect as possible, so you need to be as prepared and think of everything possible that could go through and make sure it does not go wrong to the degree that you even impress others. And you need to make sure all arrangements are well.
And when you work with people from other cultures and other backgrounds... They do not have the same programming as me. Other people work more on the fly, they do not plan to the detail everything and get everything prepared way in advance. Instead they just get the main things ready and everything else, they improvise...
So what happens when we work together or our paths cross is that I notice I get really stressed not knowing the full picture and understanding the style of my colleagues from other origins... They seem not to have the stress that I have... And guess what, they doing things their way, everything works out in the end... It is almost as if my stress was entirely unnecessary... In fact, I do think it was entirely unnecessary... In fact, I agree with Anthony that it was stemming from my programming.
There is no angry fierce boss shouting at me telling me how I should do things... But somehow, I behave and act as if there was such a person dictating how I should do things and criticising every moment I make a mis-step.
They say the unexamined life is not worth living. And Anthony says that awareness and observation and understanding are the keys to getting out of our patterns and suffering... He advised that you experience each moment afresh for what it is, unstained, uncluttered, unblemished by your past experience and your conditioning and programing from the past.
And I thought about it, look at how those people presented and hosted. They all came with what they had, some were reading off the script and not doing it so well, some were rambling on, some I was impressed by, others were people confidently but not perfectly... They did not look nervous. They look like they just knew they had a job and got it done, no stress, just did what they could.
Like a bird or a flower, they just did what they were meant to do.
And here I am, handling a tonne of pressure, feeling so stressed, and experiencing the burdened from situations long past, people who left marks on me who have long passed on... And here I am still suffering from it, 10, 20, 30 years later...
Isn't that really silly? I told myself, my salary does not change whether I do something with stress or without. Also, the quality of my work does not suffer, instead is much worse, when I do it with stress... So why I am stressing so much?
Could... mental illness and breakdown and emotional unwellness really not stem from the actual stress of the situation but from your programming and thinking about it? And could that explain why people doing some really complex task, like flying an aeroplane, where the effects of not doing it well is catastrophic, actually not feel the pressure at all. Because they are just doing the job they are trained for.
When someone keeps saying as normal in Singapore that "I'm busy", "I'm stressed"... could it be that it is that person putting themselves in that own situation through his programming and thinking and inability to step out of it? Like inability to accept that perhaps it's okay not to do such good a job, or to take things easier...
We have colleagues who don't respond to all their emails timely and miss out many important things and no one is there criticising that person, the person gets paid timely. If there's someone criticising him or her, it's this stupid me here, but what good does it do? Why not instead put the energy to thinking how to get things done despite and still having good feelings.
Like Anthony said, who am I to impose my own conditioning and programming on others and say that my programming is the standard and everyone should follow mine. It is the best! It is the right one!
So lately, I am trying to think deeper into Anthony's thinking... Because I am suffering so much from my programming. At first, I pointed my fingers to the trigger. I said and thought that I am suffering because of my external circumstances. I want to change other and change things so they don't trigger my uncomfortable feelings... But increasingly, I am seeing the sense that I am the cause of my own suffering... In terms of me reacting in a way that is unhelpful to the situation and others... Because I so easily react and respond, not out of wisdom and thinking what this situation entails, but from a long ago imprinted set of behaviours and patterns that were imposed on me, without me agreeing to them being imposed on me.
No comments:
Post a Comment