The Four Horsemen of the Mental Apocalypse
They are kicking up quite a storm theses days.
Hello friends,
As I re-boot (and re-brand!) my Zen@Work offerings, I thought I would share some of the insight and practices I’ve developed around Distraction, Stress, Worry, and Anxiety.
Over the last two years, my professional, personal, and vocational paths have been very full and often chaotic. I’ve been riding the startup rollercoaster, managing two households (in Boulder and Bozeman, MT) with my wife Aria and three teenagers, and leading the Eon Zen Center with a sangha of committed students. I’ve had ample opportunity to work with all of these conditions. And I have to confess, it has not been easy!
I have no doubt you have been feeling these as well. It is the way of the world right now. Things are moving very fast, and there is a lot of chaos and dysfunction. Zen is designed to help us function in such environments with agency and equanimity by not separating ourselves from it. This is easier said than done, so I hope this newsletter may help you.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my re-brand of Zen@Work, and some upcoming free offerings, including a deeper dive into the material below. As always, I appreciate shares on social media, and recommendations to your friends to subscribe to this newsletter (links below).
I’ve re-booted my coaching work as well, which I am now calling Zen Whole Life Mentoring, to honor my broader focus beyond just business coaching (although that is included). If you would like to explore working with me one-on-one, I’m offering a free Discovery session, which you can book here. If you refer a friend to a Discovery session, I’ll give you an additional session for free. I am looking forward to re-engaging individually and hearing what YOU are up to.
with love,
Paul
The Four Horseman of the Mental Apocalypse!
All high-functioning people are intimately familiar with the Four Horsemen. Every day we face varying levels of Distraction, Stress, Worry and Anxiety. Mindfulness practices are a powerful way to relieve the negative effects, but doing them without an understanding of the root causes of the condition may ultimately amount to simple coping mechanisms that lose their power and also fail to access the wisdom contained within. (The word Apocalypse means Revelation and there is much to be revealed in your mental distress!)
When you can identify the different layers of affliction — which Horsemen are leading the charge at any particular time — you can adapt your mind accordingly. Taking them on individually allows you to master your body-mind.
Distraction
The easiest of the Horsemen to conquer. Distractions are mental or sensory forms that (usually) possess low- to no- information signal or emotional charge. Your upcoming dinner plans, scheduling a mechanic, computer and phone alerts. High functioning leaders are typically relatively good at handling distractions, but our complex, information- and -device saturated work environments are even better at providing them.
How to Work With Distraction: A basic breath-counting practice of 10-minutes per day will allow you to develop the “attentional muscle” to maintain focus in the midst of distraction. Each moment of the day, you can practice paying attention to one thing. Limit conscious “multi-tasking”, regularly shift from visual-verbal to feeling-auditory, and do One Thing at a time.
Keep in Mind: Distractions are not always “bad.” Sometimes they are just what you need to get you out of a rut and into a more creative flow. Sometimes they are the universe’s way of giving you just what you need.
Stress
A stronger Horseman, sly in its effects, yet capable of compounding small matters into larger ones. Left unchecked, it will bring down the healthiest warrior. Yet if you understand the mechanics of stress, you can defeat it. We understand the mechanics of stress with reference to the Ideal Gas law: PV=nRT. Pressure or stress (P) is directly proportional to the number of things on your mind (n), and their emotional charge (T). It is indirectly proportional to your mental capacity (V).
How to Work With Stress: Reducing the number of matters on your mind (“checking things off your list” or procrastinating), as momentarily satisfying as it is, is only the grossest way of working with stress. The more powerful way is to decrease your emotional charge and increase your awareness capacity. Basic focused attention practices, including breath-counting, open awareness, body scan, and various guided meditations do both.
Keep in Mind: We often need a level of stress to move forward with a plan or project. And “stress tests” on our minds and behaviors can help us develop resilience. The key is to understand and work with your chronic, semi-conscious stressors.
Worry
A regal Horseman, insisting you pay attention to its one intimidating weapon. Worry appears as a single emotionally-charged question that cries for attention: how do I scale my business? should I invest in this consultant? do I hire this person or make this deal? where can I save money? Our usual response to worry is overthinking and overanalyzing. We believe our conceptual minds can “figure it out.”
How to Work With Worry: Without ignoring sound analysis and decision-support resources, you must also hold charged questions in body awareness, without seeking for an answer. The ability to be with uncertainty and ambiguity is the key to inspired action. The Somatic Questioning practice neutralizes the mental looping, and leads to resolution.
Keep in Mind: Unaddressed worries will go underground and sprout weeds all over your life. It is best to meet them directly. And always be willing to acknowledge you might not know “the answer” at the moment. The mind of not-knowing is required for the knowledge of the right answer to appear.
Anxiety
Perhaps the most daunting Horseman, Anxiety arises from our deepest fears, creating a vortex around which all other stressors and issues spin. Identifying the most active fears is key to working with it. The center of the Anxiety vortex is usually one of five versions of instability: financial insecurity (do I have enough budget/revenue/income?), physical unsafeness (feeling grounded throughout the days), relational instability (who are my allies?), epistemological uncertainty (what’s true?) and existential instability (default, losing your job, going out of business, death).
How to Work With Anxiety: Identify which of the core causes is alive for you (there may be more than one!), and hold it directly in your awareness. Learning to ground in groundlessness is difficult but is the key to slowing the vortex, revealing the wisdom at the center.
Keep in Mind: Anxiety possesses great wisdom. Listen to the message of your anxiety, which typically involve fears of being out of control. When you accept your lack of control without trying to fix it, you may emerge into a very wakeful place in your life.
Overwhelm/Burnout
Too much of any of the above over too long a period produces this familiar condition: physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. Need I say more?
How to Work With Burnout: There are four ways to address burnout: 1) reduce your workload, take a break or vacation; 2) give yourself loads of self-care; 3) get support from allies; 4) the Zen practice of learning to be non-attached to outcomes, while still caring.
Keep in Mind: Burnout often arises from a gap between what you want to do and what you are able to do. Acknowledging the inherent limitations on what you can do, adjust your expectations so your desires are more in line with reality.
I’ll have more trainings coming up on the Four Horsemen in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Photo by Lucia Macedo on Unsplash