Goodbye To Pressure

Efficiency is the most important criteria in performance evaluation but we should not necessarily be hurried for it. Whenever we have to deal with the job we should have the attitude "Take advantage of time without hurry".

We need to consider our ability in condition of making the most of time or in another  word, you should do the work to the best of your ability. If we have this positive attitude at work, we may not carry a heavy load on our shoulder, because it is no use being in a hurry. Besides worry, panic and sorrow won't help anything in dealing with the job; on the contrary it may cause pressure.

 

A race against time often causes physical and psychological tension. Therefore, we need to establish relaxation in our mind, learn the way "Consider work as an interesting job, a pleasure of life" thereby enjoying work, enjoying life to feel the happiness and the light sensation in our mind without tension and pressure. 

 

In addition, if we set up a high level goal, we feel the self-inflicted pressure and we also need to learn the way to face and complete the jobs with a light heart and an easy mind. For example, some people have asked me to complete some work in a certain time. I won't feel that is a pressure but I consider it as my expectation. Therefore, I can control the time of completion by myself; I'm also not worried if the task is completed or not, because worry is so redundant. It looks like the case of a train that is running on the railway. Under that fixed speed, it will reach the terminal in some time but all of a sudden, there supposed to be a truck that enters the intersection illegally and hits the train, which is unavoidable bad luck and completely beyond our subjective desire. Therefore, it is no good worrying about something before it happens because it only increases the pressure and psychological instability while preceding the work.

 

So, you may have the question: “How to remove pressure at work? It's important that we have a plan before doing something, and have to understand clearly about our real ability at the same time; we should not overestimate or underestimate our own ability. If we think we are just incompetent people with limited knowledge but our desires are too high, of course we can hardly complete the job and we tend to blame the failure on the hard job. For example, I want to become the most venerable who gets mark 100 (the maximum points of capacity assessment)  , but my ability is only mark 60 however hard I try and that will not definitely bother me; As you can see it's good when we are assigned a suitable task, but on the contrary, the assignment is too tough for us to complete, which may cause pressure that helps us maintain a positive attitude at work; if we can't complete the job in our ability, we shouldn't entreat favors of others as well as blame ourselves.

 

After understanding this matter, we can reduce our stress at work more easily, but we, humans, are inherently calculating, likely to be afraid of failure, not able to catch up with the rate of progress or dread that some bad luck will happen to us one day out of our expectation, so there is no safe sensation and no peace in our mind.

 

In reality, there are a lot of things we can't control in this world. For example, we can't control the fate; even we can't know what will happen in the next time. Therefore, we shouldn't be so worried; let's ignore the foolish worries and concentrate on what we are doing; We only need to try to do the job whole-heartedly, then we can reduce the stress. But what should we do when the pressure still makes us worried? In this case, we need to ignore the job, let our body and mind relax for a moment otherwise the more we hurry and the busier we are kept in, the more pressure you will cope with. Changing our conception, the way of perspectives and approach to the problems will refresh our mind; enable us to feel comfortable and to relieve us at work.

 

Venerable Master Sheng Yen