“People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.”
—Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
Last year, I was experiencing an unusually present feeling of emptiness. Even though I live a fortunate life and I love my job, my brain was defaulting to anxiety and depression. Around that time, I had heard a tip about how volunteer work can help alleviate feelings of depression and purposelessness. So, I gave it a try.
I began training for work at a crisis hotline. If you’re not familiar, a crisis hotline is a mental health resource for anyone who needs support. This includes everything from anxiety relief to finding a warm place to sleep. After three grueling months of training, I graduated and began my weekly shift. Volunteers are expected to serve for a year after completing the training. Not long into the job, I started experiencing severe pain and numbness in both my hands and elbows and, because the job requires holding a phone for several hours and involves lots of typing, I was advised by a doctor to stop after just two months. I felt like a failure to myself, as well as the people the organization was trying to help.
It’s funny how success, once achieved, is sometimes scarier than failure. When we achieve success, it becomes normal and expected. From there, we can only raise the stakes. Failure, somewhat paradoxically, can serve as a pressure-release valve. Sure, the first few days after a failure are difficult, but then the pressure is gone and we stand toe-to-toe with the oncoming process of learning from our mistakes.
I was volunteering because I wanted to do something good, but also because I felt comfortable with my success at work and therefore needed a new goal. Being happy at work wasn’t enough. So, I challenged myself with the crisis hotline training program. Little did I know that preparation for the hotline would cause me to come face-to-face with parts of myself I didn’t know existed. Even though I loved taking calls for the few months that I did, it did not cure personal anxiety or depression. In fact, it made these emotions more difficult to deal with.
The conscious imagination drives the brain to feel depressed as a response to what one should have done, and to feel pressure and uneasiness about what might happen in the future—especially if we expect perfection or fantasize about getting approval. How, then, can we ever expect to overcome anxiety or rewire depression if we keep paving these remembered pathways by constantly searching for the next success.
“Perfectionism is...a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from being seen.”
—Brené Brown
What I didn’t know during my time on the crisis line was that I was experiencing a crisis of my own—a mid-career crisis. For me, I was suffering from burnout precipitated by physical pain. I thought that I wasn’t good enough, and I wanted to so badly to be perfect.
If we get caught up in the idea that a perfect self is perfectly received by our peers, then we come to expect and accept nothing less. We become disappointed in our own success because it never feels good enough. We never stop to enjoy our creative work for what it is. We try to become the person we aspire to be, instead of the person we are.
“You’ll never become who you want to be, until you accept who you are.”
—Anonymous
Eventually, what I came to understand is that I had not failed. I had learned the skill of supportive listening, I’d worked with extraordinary people, and I’d had a chance to thoroughly examine my own life.
What if I could appreciate the moments I’d had on the crisis line, rather than focusing on the perceived character flaws that led me to step away? What if I could see that my ambition to push myself further than I can actually go is what helps me succeed at work? How dangerous would it be to accept myself as the person that did a strong two months, rather than an uncommitted full year.
Or, what if my past didn’t matter as much as I thought it did and the future wasn’t as defined as I needed it to be.
“We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.”
—Bill Hicks
Let’s consider Shared Consciousness Theory. The idea that we are conscious, but the conceptualization of consciousness lives in our imagination and, in order for the imagination to exist, we must have a consciousness to be aware of it. In this way, one necessitates the other. The imagination exists nowhere else other than our consciousness. And our consciousness exists nowhere except in our imagination.
Even if you don’t believe that all people share one consciousness, the idea at least demonstrates how anxiety and depression about our work and identity begin on the inside. The story we’ve told ourselves about our future, even if painted from a place of ambition, is the source of our mental health battles. But, the thing is, our future doesn’t exist. It’s made up in our imaginations. If it begins on the inside, we can regain control over it.
“The present is so complete that it requires no future.”
—Alan Watts\
When I am able to give up my idea of the future, I realize that, at any given time, everything is exactly how it is supposed to be at every moment. This feeling of Zen brings with it a sense of intense freedom, relief and lightness for me in my career. The world confronting us is no longer an obstacle and our bodies are no longer a burden.
For months after leaving the crisis hotline, I relied on voice dictation so I could work on my computer. But once I made peace with my time there, and my career, and become aware of my tendency toward perfectionism, the pain in my arms began to subside.
I started using the supportive listening technique I had learned at the crisis hotline to become a better teammate and co-worker. I learned to practice empathy—and not sympathy—with my team, family, and friends. I took on the positive attitude of true front-line crisis workers. I also began meditating. I even came up with personal mantras. Most importantly, I began to journal. I used voice dictation at first, but after about seven months I was back to writing and typing.
Work for the sake of working, rather than as a way to become fulfilled. Rather than focusing on dreams you never pursued (and the associated guilt) and focus on applying yourself to each day and to each moment. Over the past year I have noticed a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in healthy sleep. The realization that I am happy at work now, no matter what the future holds, helped me become a better employee, leader and creative.
Whether achieving Zen holds the answer to the mystery of your career, or if it’s the realization that there is no mystery and thus no answer, whenever you feel stressed, there’s one thing to always remember: We are the imagination of ourselves.