
How Am I Supposed to Focus on Work Right Now?
In the US, the federal government, which funds a ton of things we rely on, not to mention aid to other countries, is being dismantled. An unelected guy has access to every American’s confidential data. Food is about to get even more expensive.
You can be forgiven for having a hard time focusing on your paperwork!
But you have bills to pay, and it won’t do anyone any good for you to lose your job. There’s enough of that going around already. So what can you do?
Negotiate With Yourself
Swami Tadatmananda, a teacher of the nondual spirituality, teaches a particularly useful way to set a sankalpa. A sankalpa is an intention you set to focus on your meditation. But as you are setting this intention, he encourages you to acknowledge that you have many other pressing issues in your life that need your attention, and that you are only setting them aside temporarily, and you can attend to them later. This makes it easier to follow through with that intention to focus on meditation.
It makes a lot of sense to me that this reminder is helpful. As a parts worker, I notice that minds behave as though they’re made of many different parts. One part of you may be worried about what will happen in the US or how it will affect other countries. Another part of you may be worried about getting your work done.
When a part of you feels ignored or suppressed, it gets louder. So it’s no wonder that your mind starts to feel noisy and crowded when you try to focus on work.
But there’s a solution. You can take a moment to acknowledge the part of you that worries about politics, economics, justice, and so on. You can tell that part of you that its concerns are important to you and you want to hear them and act on them, and that you’ll do so later.
This is deeper than just carving up your schedule and compartmentalizing. It’s an emotional activity. When you validate the importance of these political concerns, you have to mean it, and that means you have to open up your heart just enough to feel the way that, whew, this stuff you’re worried about is a really big deal and it is worth spending time on. And, you couldn’t even do justice to it right now. But you can find a time to genuinely sit with it.
You may feel a deep gratitude arise for this part of you that cares about the big picture and doesn’t want you to live your life as if paperwork is all that matters.
People often worry that genuinely connecting with a part of them this way, seeing its valid points, appreciating its good intentions, will suck you into doing what it wants. They worry, for instance, that taking the time to have this sankalpa-like inner conversation will suck you into worrying about politics instead of focusing on work.
But in my coaching, I observe the opposite. When you genuinely acknowledge your parts from a place of gratitude, they relax. The key is to relate to the part rather than becoming the part.
If you let yourself fall into the worldview of the political part, then you go into that zone where all you can think about it how things are falling apart and what you can do about it. But it turns out that there’s another way to relate to the political part, where you don’t get into the specifics of the politics, but you focus on the beautiful reasons why this part cares about any politics in the first place. This doesn’t get you into the weeds of what happened in the news today, it doesn’t get you riled up, and it relaxes the political part enough that you can take care of your other responsibilities in life.
So try this sankalpa-inspired technique: set an intention to focus on your work, but acknowledge the validity and importance of your other concern, and agree to come back to it later.
It’s important to keep your promise! If you promise your parts that you’ll deal with their concerns after work, and you never do, they will stop believing you. We’ve all had the experience of telling ourselves we’ll do something and thinking “who am I kidding, no I won’t.” To avoid turning this into one of those things, you need to face your feelings.
Tend to Your Feelings
This is the part where you put your own oxygen mask on first. If you try to go straight into action without addressing the way the news is stressing you out, you won’t make your best decisions. In this rapidly shifting landscape, we need to be mentally flexible, whereas untended stress makes us rigid. We need to work together, whereas stressed out people tend to lash out at each other. Not to mention the obvious – if being engaged in the news is too upsetting, you just won’t be able to stay engaged. You’ll go numb or you’ll eventually burn out.
So, you need to face your feelings. This can be scary, because in our culture we don’t learn how to do it effectively. But it is doable.
Start by finding a sense of safety. Is there something around you that makes you feel warm and fuzzy to notice? Is there a place in your body that feels grounded (often this is the place where you feel the weight of your body the most, like your feet or your seat)? Is there a place you can imagine in your mind that feels totally safe and comfortable?
There is no award for facing your feelings without a sense of safety. It doesn’t make this go any faster and it doesn’t make you any tougher. It just prevents it from really working.
Now that you have a sense of safety and groundedness, notice what you’re feeling in your body. Emotions show up physically, and while it can feel like you absolutely need to deal with them through your thoughts, it actually tends to go faster if you focus on the physical sensation. Observe the feeling of your anger, fear, worry, grief, or whatever it is you’re feeling.
If it could be seen, what color, size, and shape would it have? If it could be touched, what texture and temperature would it have? Notice anything at all you can describe about it. Stay in touch with your sense of safety, returning your attention to the object, place in your body, or imaginary place that grounds you whenever needed.
As you notice your raw, unconceptualized emotion from a place of safety, things may start to shift. It may become more clear to you what you feel and what you need. You may start to want to shake out pent up stress and let it out of your body. You may deepen into a sense of peace. It’s also possible that it will be too hard to let go of your focus on thoughts or to maintain your sense of safety, in which case I would recommend working with someone who can guide you.
There’s a lot more you can do to feel and release your feelings, but this is a start. If you want help, consider booking a free Activist Stress Release session with me.
Take Action
If you put your oxygen mask on but then don’t help with anyone else’s, you may feel helpless or out of alignment. You might start to associate stress release with being self-centered, which is a terrible misconception. Stress release is crucial to showing up for the world effectively. It’s just that the showing up part doesn’t happen automatically. Just like you made time for your feelings, you also need to make time to take action.
But it can be hard to figure out what to do in such unprecedented circumstances. So let’s use George Lakey’s adaptation of Bill Moyer’s four roles in social change to break down your options:
Helper
You can help people directly, by donating or volunteering. You can join a mutual aid network. My stress release sessions are a way I like to help.
Advocate
Lawyers can challenge the many illegal actions that have been taken. Journalists can make what’s going on more understandable and widely known. Marketers can make our case more compelling. Social workers can help people navigate a complex system, or what’s left of it. Residents can call their representatives and advocate for resistance.
Organizer
You can motivate and coordinate people to help them run a concerted campaign to change something. If you’re new to this, I recommend looking for existing organizations that you can join rather than trying to rally people on your own. It’ll save you a lot of time and energy and you’ll get to tap into experienced organizers’ knowledge, skill, and networks.
Rebel
You can say no when ordered to do something wrong. You can engage in direct action.
Which of these feels most like you? Who else is already doing this that you can join?
It’s a Balance
It’s easy to be drawn to one extreme or the other: to want to tune this out because it’s uncomfortable, or to feel guilty for ever focusing on your own life instead of on the news. But this is just the political version of the everyday conflict between avoiding something uncomfortable and working yourself to death, the one that causes so much of our procrastination.
Balance is an important part of being healthy and effective. We typically try to achieve balance by pulling in opposite directions just the right amount, but that leaves us in a lot of tension. By facing your feelings head-on, first in your sankalpa-like acknowledgment that they need to be addressed (even if not right now) and later by really allowing yourself to feel them, you open up the possibility of a kind of balance that isn’t based on a tug-of-war. A kind of balance that you relax into and find naturally. A kind of balance you can sustain.