Bringing awareness to my work process is like having two jobs — there’s the job itself, and there’s the work of seeing how I cause myself to suffer in that job. Yesterday, I felt mentally exhausted and anxious as I worked, and I looked to see how that was happening. I saw that I was operating out of several false beliefs:
False belief #1 — Stress is necessary for success.
False belief #2 — I’m lazy and I have to hide that.
False belief #3 — I will probably not meet people’s expectations, and they will be disappointed in me.
False belief #4 — I can avoid #3 if I work hard enough. (illusion of control)
False belief #5 — If I’m not suffering, I’m not working hard enough.
All of these beliefs are complete bullshit, formed during the conditioning process as I was growing up. Because I wasn’t conscious of them, they held a lot of power over me. They still do when I’m not paying attention.
But I’m really trying to pay attention. As soon as I wrote down these beliefs, I looked at them and thought, “Jesus, no wonder work was exhausting and unpleasant.” Just being able to see this made my experience of working today so much better.
