The Healing Power of Stress at Work--Part 1

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. "

Bertrand Russell

It is ironic that what we call "earning a living" leaves so many of us feeling dead tired when it is over. I am willing to bet that no matter where you go to earn a day’s pay, you most likely report to a stress factory that pumps out some of the finest product around. I am also willing to bet that you have, at one time or another, thought that if you did not have to work, there would be no stress in your life. So synonymous are work and stress that I propose we just go ahead and say we are going to stress, rather than to work, and at least avoid the idealistic hope that it should be anything else.

Sarcasm aside, we can see that work is both the laboratory where we give life to our stress and the playground on which we let it run amok. Recent studies have suggested that as many as 80 percent of adults identify their jobs as their leading cause of stress—the other 20 percent, apparently, are unemployed and currently stressing over when they will be able to return to work. Being miserable at work is so embedded within our collective psyches that even people who profess to love their jobs will find things about it to stress over. The unstated pledge in many workplaces seems to be "If you want to be one of us, you are have to hate being here." Thus my phrase, Misery loves companies.

If we are ever going to break free from the destructive powers of stress while still having a roof over our heads, food on the table, and a thousand high definition channels on our super-plasma television sets, we are going to have to come to terms with work- related stress. I’m sure you have had the experience of having a perfectly planned day spoiled by the sudden awareness that it was not the weekend and your boss was eagerly anticipating your arrival. The fact that most heart attacks occur on Monday mornings is a depressing commentary on the power we have handed over to our careers.

I want to use the healing power of stress to provide an even more direct path through the job jungle and see if we can machete our way through the trials and tribulations of our careers. I hope to help you see the workplace as a training ground for your new outlook on stress and begin to take some of the work out of working. As some of you make this journey, you may have to face the reality that your jobs no longer serve your sanity and that your insurance is no longer covering the fallout. Others will discover that work has simply become the center ring in the circus of stress that seems to set up tents wherever you land. In either case, you are going to have to break the cycle of thinking that you can have a negative outlook and a positive outcome. We will do well to remember Eckhart Tolle’s advice that "When you fight life, it fights you back."

A good place to start your adventure is to pay close attention to others as you interact with them while they do their jobs. Try this with the cashier ringing you out at the grocery store, the bank teller handing you your money, the waitress taking your lunch order, the telemarketer trying to get you to buy and subscription to "Get a Life" magazine, the nurse taking your blood pressure and the taxi cab driver taking you home after realizing that you were the last one standing at the bar when they call "last round."

If you do this, minus the critical mind that will want to critique the performance of your fellow human beings, you will begin to experience suffering in its raw form. Allow your mind to extend itself and imagine what it is that lies behind what you once simply labeled "a bad attitude," "poor service," or "the devil incarnate." See if you can, if only for an instant, allow this wall to drop and feel the humanness in someone who, like you, most likely only wanted to come to work today and not leave with a splitting migraine. Don’t be surprised if this is a little overwhelming at first. Many of us have created such a separation between ourselves and the others that we bump into in the game of life that we see them as mere obstacles to our need for the good life. We are no longer our brother’s keeper but ones who keep our brothers and sisters at a safe distance so as to try and keep the crap from their lives splashing our happy suits.

Once you have encountered the workforce in this way, turn this light of awareness of yourself while you are busy doing whatever it is you do to keep the poverty monster off your back. Rather than berate yourself for missing the deadline, just watch the movement within yourself. While doing this, avoid the "poor me" syndrome that has you as the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated employee in the known universe. Simply watch where in your body the tension lands and how your body responds to it. When the phone rings, avoid the reflex response of thinking that it can only be someone on the other end who has made it their personal mission in life to push you over the edge. Instead, really listen to yourself as you talk and feel the words as they slip across your lips. Apply this same routine to every interaction and activity at work. The point here is not to concentrate on yourself at work but to simply experience yourself while you go about your day. Don’t label you actions or interactions, instead, be what Buddhists refer to as the "silent witness."

What you will most likely find is that many of your responses are simply old habits playing over and over again. We are all good at witnessing these in our coworkers. The world of substance abuse recovery calls this "taking someone else’s inventory." I am suggesting that the very process of taking this inventory produces unnecessary stress in you. I am suggesting that one of the reasons that the work place becomes so dangerous is that many of us walk around carrying what we think are maps of all of the emotional land mines around us, while at the same time carefully burying our own around every corner and in every break room. This is why so many people actually report not feeling safe at their jobs.

Psychotic coworkers aside, you are your own worst enemy at your job. Yes, it might very well be true that your boss possesses all of the savvy of a sponge and that you have to rub shoulders with more shady characters than you would find in a Star Wars bar scene. However, you will still be faced with the fact your work stress still says more about you than those around you. To be fair, it actually says more about the human condition than it says about you, but I did not think that would get your attention in the same way. As the ego’s playground, the workplace will always be filled with tension. Mind games are the product produced at every job site no matter what the official company mission statement says and the fine print of every work contract should read, "The only thing worse than being left alone with your thoughts is being surrounded by the thoughts of others." So it should come as no surprise to you that at the end of a day’s worth of "my ego is bigger than yours" your head hurts, your chest feels tight, and the only thing you really have a grip on is the stirring wheel as your race home, with NASCAR-like precision, so you can tell your significant other about your plans to open up a fruit stand.