How to Do The Work on Busy Life Stress

Life Is Full of Great Things

There’s no end of things to learn, things to experience, places to visit, people to know. Just being curious and open to life exposes me to an infinite number of different directions I can take. And many times I want to take them all.

That’s when it becomes stressful. I want to take each direction to its endpoint, and there are just too many directions. So I freeze, unable to start in even one direction. Or I feel frustrated as I try to do the impossible and split my time into smaller and smaller pieces in order to do it all.

How Can I Use The Work to Regain Balance?

The first place to start is to notice my emotion. That’s always the starting point for The Work. For me, the feeling is frustration that I don’t have enough time to do it all. And more importantly to me, not enough time to do it all well.

So that’s the general emotion. Frustration. How do I get from the emotion to some statements I can question using The Work?

The first step for me is to narrow it down to a specific situation. If I can land somewhere concrete, it can really help me do The Work.

Here Are Some Concrete Examples

As I look over my experience recently, I can find several moments when I felt a little frustrated over not having enough time to do it all: wanting to learn several different languages; wanting more time for yoga, meditation, reading, and sleep; and at work wanting to have more time for administration, web development, writing, private sessions, course development, etc.

These are still pretty broad results from my initial brainstorming. Let me pick just one of these areas to zoom into: the learning languages example will do. It’s not a huge deal for me, but it is stressful. And it can be a great platform for exploring this issue for me.

The Next Stage Is Narrowing It Down

I started learning Norwegian last December and kept with it for 20-30 min/day through May. I was starting to gain some momentum. But I also wanted to learn French. So I stopped studying Norwegian and started with French for the past two months.

How do I find one specific moment as a landing place for doing The Work? I often use these questions to help me narrow it down:

• When did I most recently get stressed by this? (When I saw a Norwegian friend last week with whom I had talked about practicing Norwegian.)
• When was the first time it came up? (Last December when I changed my original plan of studying French and went to Norwegian instead.)
• Was there a particularly strong moment that stands out? (The moment I stopped studying Norwegian in May. Also, the moment I originally changed my mind from studying French to Norwegian back in December—I remember “giving my word” that I would study French during the Sahara trip last October.)

Now, It’s Getting Pretty Granular

And interestingly, some relationship issues are coming into focus in addition to my general beliefs that there is not enough time.

I could question, “I don’t have enough time to study both languages, is it true?” Or, “I want to study both languages, is it true?” But I could also zoom in further into one of these stressful moments.

Zooming in makes it even more specific. For example, let me look at the moment last week when I saw the friend with whom I had talked about practicing Norwegian. That is a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet:

1. I feel ashamed with her because she is disappointed with me.
2. I want her to be understanding of me.
   I want her to like me.
3. She should see that there is not enough time to do everything.
   She should remind me that’s not all or nothing.
   She should say, “Let’s meet anyway.”
4. I need her to not hold me to what I said (that I’d practice with her).
   I need her to say, “This doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing.”
   I need her to say, “I understand when priorities change.”
   I need her to say, “Let’s do it when you study Norwegian again.”
5. She is judging me, disappointed, feeling let down.
6. I don’t ever want to not be able to keep a promise again.

As you can see, a big part of this issue is about me keeping my word and not wanting to disappoint anyone. That’s what charges it for me.

I actually gave my word to two different people: to one that I would study French, and to the other that I would study Norwegian. No wonder it’s stressful. It’s not just the lack of time, it’s the possibility of disappointing others that is fueling my stress.

That’s why I like the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet so much. It often comes down to relationship stuff. When I deal with that, the more global issue of not having enough time to do it all, tends to weaken and fade.

And, of course, I can still work my more general stressful thoughts about time. But when I deal with specific situations and the relationships within them, I often get to see things that I would miss if I only worked the one-liners that first came to mind.

Have a great weekend,
Todd

“I strongly suggest that if you are new to inquiry, you not write about yourself at first. If you start by judging yourself, your answers come with a motive and with solutions that haven’t worked. Judging someone else, then inquiring and turning it around, is the direct path to understanding. You can judge yourself later, when you have been doing inquiry long enough to trust the power of truth.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is

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