From 'Super-Acheiver' to 'Frazzled-Mess', the Effects of Stress at Work: micro-blog from Desteni Universe

#EQAFEDISCOVERY

 

I have been working at a job for over 2 months now, and I had been becoming anxious about my performance as I was receiving no feedback, yet I knew I was in a probationary period where they could let me go at a moment's notice.

Finally my boss reached out to me to give me a review. According to her, I was the fastest and most accurate reviewer on the moderating team, and they wanted to give me more hours because I rarely made mistakes and moved quickly through the work. I hadn't received feedback because I was "the least of her concerns", was "the best one on the team" and so on like this to the point where I began to feel embarrassed by the flattery.

These were of course, the words I had always wanted to hear from a boss, or any authority for that matter, and I could hardly believe my eyes as I read them. "The best", "fastest", "most accurate". As I breathed them in and placed myself neatly onto a little pedestal in my mind, I didn't realize that I was setting myself up for a fall.

Now I had something to lose, a reputation to keep, couldn't afford to look like I didn't know what I was doing. Before that, I had been humble, trying my best, asking questions not afraid to show I did not know the answers. Now I was 'the best one' that 'never made mistakes'... I suddenly felt as though

I couldn't live up to my own reputation!

Then things in my life moved around a bit, with money and big decisions to be directed, and all together it triggered a serious 'stress' response in me. I could no longer focus on the work, would forget each piece of information as I moved on to the next, became fidgety and irritable, looking for distractions as I worked, and began displaying all the symptoms that had in my past labelled me as having 'adult ADD' by a psychiatrist.

When I looked back on my life, I noticed this very same pattern: I was the best runner at my level, until I made it to the provincial level and experienced the stress of real competition, and I choked. I was the best soccer player on my team, until I got old enough where soccer all of a sudden become a serious 'school pride' thing, now with pressure to perform, and I became the worst player. I started at my last job with a splash, and got a promotion before my colleagues that had been there for years before me, and ended up by having a breakdown from the stress.

I even developed a fear of survival point, where I hold the belief that I cannot provide for myself in this world with the system the way it is, because as soon as there is stress: I break.

And so begins my journey of finally taking on the point of stress creation in my mind, because I see that if I don't take on this point, this pattern of great falls will continue. I also see that despite my past falls and breaks, I did display a potential to be effective, and that is something worth fighting for.

My journey begins with the Atlanteans "Stress: The History, Origin and Nature". In this recording, the system, design and emotional experience of stress is broken down and explained. Interestingly, it begins in childhood, when our beingnesses, which are comfortable and content, react to the initial seed of unexpected and unexplained fear, for which we are completely unprepared! That 'unpreparedness' and 'unexpectedness' creates a stress response within the beingness, and then of course our physical bodies react as well. We live with this unquestioningly until it develops into an entire personality later in life - one with its own thought patterns, reactions, behaviours and so on, like an entity that takes over! This would explain how I go from a 'super-achiever' to a 'frazzled mess' as soon as my stress response is triggered and takes hold!

I have begun this journey by doing self-forgiveness on the first fears I can remember, and also on my response to those fears. I will listen to the series and apply the practical applications in each recording, and I will dig into this point until I uproot it and find living solutions that I can apply in my life to find that point of long-term consistency and stability that I had been lacking.

Thanks very much, and if you can relate, then enjoy this recording and join me in taking on The Stress System:

Stress: The History, Origin and Nature - Atlanteans - Part 97

 

The Living Word: 'Routine'

I have recently been working with the word 'routine'. It is a word I've judged as boring, mundane, lifeless, robotic and underwhelming due having lived most of my life within routines that I did not enjoy, and having them imposed upon me. Breaking free from the routine was like finally living, getting to the fun part of Life.

Due to this past history and the baggage the word was carrying with it in my mind I have struggled with implementing any kind of routine into my life. But when I opened the word up and found the solution for myself, I realized that a routine is necessary for the cumulative effect: that process of accumulating small steps to reach or attain big goals - and this is actually necessary for any and all goals of any and all sizes!

A routine is a path, or a 'route' towards any goal, and the process one must walk is the moment-to-moment, the small stuff, the teeny tiny little movements and decisions that come together to produce actions as a step-by-step process of learning, growing, trial and error, and then eventually moving those proverbial 'mountains'.

When I started looking at redefining my own Living Definition the Word 'Routine', what I saw that worked best for me was to clarify my goal for myself, because a 'routine' is a cumulative process, so it's important to be clear with oneself in terms of what one is accumulating towards ,and what will the end result be! And then I will 'let it go', so to speak, where 'the END GOAL' no longer becomes the focus of my daily participation.

What I focus on daily is breaking the goal down to the smallest possible steps, the teeny steps (routTINE/teeny), so the the route I am taking is seen not as that loooong and arduous struggle, but more like simple daily steps that I can celebrate!

ROUTINE: The Route of Teeny Steps.

How and where I am applying this in my life currently, is towards the goal of physical health and fitness, something I have been struggling with keeping consistent with. I started a routine of drinking water in the morning for three consecutive days. Once accomplished, I added a healthy breakfast for three days, and then 8 minutes of light exercise (with the help of an app for reminders and structure!). I kept the steps 'teeny'. Tiny goals that I can integrate over time until they become routine, and then I can add, grow, expand upon them. But for now, I focus on the task at hand, the daily route, the tiny steps it takes to walk a process, no rush, no pressure, no time, just Here in the moments of my Life, taking steps to honour me!

Day 218 - In Money but not OF Money - How to Find Your Passion Without Chasing Money

I was able to sit in on this interview recording which discusses the problems money can create in our lives, and how it can flatten our passions and work when it becomes the starting point of whatever it is we become involved with.
 

I will first share the questions addressed in the interview, questions which I am sure almost every working person has asked themselves at some point in their career. Next, I will share my own case study example of how I lived this issue in my own life.

The Questions:

Is the quality of your work and your expression within it diminishing over time?

Do the things that you once loved doing feel more like work and less like something in which you are expanding and exploring yourself?

What happened to that spark that was once there?

These are often symptoms of when money begins to take over our lives and our expressions to such a degree that we suffocate our passion, our drive, and our sense of self-value.

Discover how we can begin to change our relationship to money so that we can bring back the spark and the inner passion of who we are within what we do, and not allow money to override our work, our living, and our expression.

The recording can be found here:

In Money But Not of Money - The Soul of Money

My living example, and how I lived it for ME:

For me, personally, I found myself in a corporate job in the back offices of a bank. I got this job because I had just moved back to Canada after a divorce, and I had bills to pay. I was working because of a need for money, I was working for money. The job itself was robotic and repetitive, reading and correcting SWIFT and other payment messages all day long… basically reading money codes and finding where they are broken, why they stopped for repair instead of going straight through into the recipient's account. I also did high volume settlement transfers for large US corporations, monitoring for insufficient funds and verifying that audit requirements are met for approval limits on transactions. It sounds about as fun as it was, meaning, not at all! I felt like a real robot, a cog in the machine, working inside the mysterious black box where your money passes through when you send it anywhere.

This was NOT my idea of living my passion or changing the world to any degree, and the potential was there for me to become depressed, unmotivated, discouraged and complain… in fact, before and even during my process of change, I did all of these things! But the difference between living according to the automated patterns and programs of the mind, and living in self-awareness with the tools of self-correction, is that by using the tools of support I have been practicing for some years now, I managed to change myself within the work I do, find my fire, my passion and my spark of life, even within these conditions. I will explain how I did this, which is also looked at from various angles in the interview recording I sat in on.

The first thing I did was to change my perception of my job and why I was there. Instead of processing transactions and verifying payment messages, I made it about self-development and acquiring new skills. At work, I pushed myself to practice discipline, focus, and the ability to learn new things – all are qualities which needed some attention and development within myself anyways. I viewed my job to be more like a game, where there are moving pieces and every day, throughout the day, I needed to put the puzzle together and solve the problems.
 

This is how I changed my perception and starting point of my job, and here are some of the results:

In pushing myself, I ended up leading campaigns, doing training and making presentations to develop leadership skills and the ability to work within and direct groups. I ended up finding and implementing process improvements to improve the running of my department, and even changed the way our cross-departmental quarterly townhalls were presented. I pushed for and achieved a change in terminology within how the corporate announcements referred to employees, to a way that is more aligned with my principle of respecting and honouring my peers as my equals, and to not support the corporate hierarchy where employees low on the ladder are seen as replaceable resources. In pushing myself to develop myself, I also managed to leave changes in my workplace that will remain there after I have left.

I also developed qualities within myself the serve me to this day, leadership skills, the ability to work with all types of personalities in a group, the ability to be more direct and expressive, bringing myself as Who I Am into what I do. Also, the ability to focus on tasks that may be perceived as mundane and repetitive, discipline to push myself to do things that I might have otherwise judged as overwhelmingly boring or unpleasant. All of these things are present in daily life no matter what we do. The reality is that it is not always fun and stimulating, there’s always paperwork, administrative tasks, bills, budgeting, and things that repeat every day, so these skills I viewed as essential to my future, no matter what my future brings.

It is easy to list things here, years later, but the truth and reality is that at many points, this process was difficult, challenging and I had many hard times. 

Realistically, some skills can take years to develop. I spent the first year or so feeling a bit shell-shocked and getting back on my feet after my move and divorce. What I was able to accomplish there was planting the seeds within myself, and nurturing them into seedlings that will require continued maintenance, nurturing and support in my life. “If you don’t use it, you lose it”, as they say.

The process is far from over or complete. This is a living process of self-creation that can and must be lived in all moments throughout life. Does this sound like a burden or a lot of work? Maybe. But I don’t think so, because before I made the push to change, as I mentioned, I was living as depressed, unmotivated, discouraged and complaining. To me, THAT sounds more like a burden and a lot of hard work! Both ways are using mental and physical energy, but one way leads to growth and development, while the other leads to self-diminishment and misery.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! I will continue in my next blog.

For now, check out these links to learn how to change yourself to live your utmost potential:

 

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 To read about how I got here, check out my journey:

Leaving the Rat Race - Going to Africa
Turning a Self-Defeating Moment Into A Moment of Self-Empowerment
The Greatest Gift
The Cure to Self-Sabotage: Unprejudiced Objectivity
Conquering the Rat Race
Defining My Own Life
Re-Defining my Moment
Change Who You Are Within the Work You Do
A Small Change in Environment, A big Change in Perspective