The Role of Pressure in Working Life

 After the group meditation tonight, someone had asked Fashi about pressure and the feeling of being pressured to perform at work. Of course, many in the GTA feel pressured just to survive, and they feel that worrying is one way to get things done more quickly and efficiently.
       I have often reflected on how I have believed that worrying makes me work more efficiently. The classic example would be related to exams. There have been times when I have lived by the adage: "as long as you keep your hand moving, you should be able to finish on time." But, as Fashi had suggested during the group discussion tonight, worry doesn't necessarily accomplish anything. More than anything else, it can actually attract the kinds of results that one fears the most. An example would be how excessive worrying can lead to making careless errors, being absent minded and going through the motions just for the sake of accomplishing something. These are exactly the kinds of behaviors that a worried mindset would encourage, but they aren't the kinds of mindsets that necessarily get things done well. I have observed especially in myself a tendency to confuse the feeling of worry with a sense of getting things done or 'moving along'. Yet, without worry, one can be more in the moment and do things smoothly with a full mindset.
  Fashi also noted that worrying about something doesn't make the problem go away. There are certain situations which are inevitable, such as when a company has to downsize and lay off even its most effective workers. No matter how hard I might try, there is a lot here that is not within my control at all. In fact, very little is within my control to begin with, and it is exactly within this point of 'no control' that a person can precisely relax into what she or he is doing in the moment. For instance, if I always believe that everything starts and ends in the organ between my ears, my whole head will be tight and strained, as though  I were trying to squeeze everything out of my brain to get something done. But in reality it seems that the things needed to accomplish things are evenly dispersed throughout the mental environment: in materials, in resources, in people around me, and even in the climate. Would I be able to even get to work if there was a tornado or a heavy snowstorm? Much of what people try to do is really a kind of response to things that have already been set, including weather and environmental conditions in the workplace. Can all or any of these factors be within one's control? If not, it is best to receive whatever can be controlled with a relaxed mindset, such as 'go with the flow'.
    One way of  looking at this problem is to approach it from the view of "everything you experience is you." Now what does this mean, exactly? If I feel worry, I might automatically think, "I am that worry", and keep continuing to be worried. But if I trust and understand that the worry is only one part of an unfolding and changing experience, will I hold so tightly to that worry? Am I really 'worry'? Am I not also the boss, the environment, the plants, the work? All these things exist in mind and through mind, so they are said to be part of me. So why do I only focus on one thing at the exclusion of all the others? In this way, I can embrace worry as part of me without identifying it as 'me'. I think the important aspect is to have a way of knowing that what I am aware of doesn't exclusively define awareness or foreclose it.