What to do when we’re feeling overwhelmed by a sense that we have too much work, too many things to do?
It’s really straightforward that sometimes it is just too much and we just can’t cope because we don’t have the bandwidth, we’re not that capable.
That’s a really crucial point: it’s a contingent thing: the extent to which we can handle a lot of jobs has to be the extent to which we don’t and do need sleep, our physical health, and many, many other things. And those are just the physical components: we have to be reasonable, you know?
Now let’s look at the mental aspect. I think everybody we know these days – it’s just the nature of life – is busy, so it’s one of our favorite words: we always feel busy. And we’re not only busy, we’re too busy. I mean, do we all agree, people? We seem to have dozens of jobs to do, dozens of things we have to accomplish, and it’s never-ending. I’m not being critical – this is a fact.
I would suggest the main source of the stress is not having too much to do or being tired, it’s the way we interpret it all: I’m so busy, I can’t handle this, this is too much, I’m so exhausted, I can’t do this.
Using our usual Buddhist analysis: basically attachment is not getting what it wants – comfort, etc. – so the aversion, the anxiety, arises. That’s the essence of it.
We need to look carefully at this. The usual logic is: “I’ve got too much to do, I’m tired, so of course I’m feeling stressed.” Just the thought that we won’t get our sleep makes us exhausted. We never question this.
If I look at someone like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, or His Holiness, because they don’t have delusions they can do twenty times more than we do and not get stressed. This is clear proof not of something mystical but of the simple fact that they have rid their minds of attachment and anxiety and the rest.
But we’re not like that, so we have to know our capabilities; we have to know what we can and can’t do, yes, we’ve got to get some sleep. But it’s crucial that we recognize that the mind is the main thing.
I remember years ago, in the eighties, I was living in London and working for Wisdom Publications, in editorial and production. I’m an action girl: I like to be busy. It’s wonderful to do things, it’s wonderful to get things done, be useful, help people, it’s great.
Yes, I was busy, but I could see the trap of it: all the self-pity. So I remember vividly deciding – I made a conscious decision – I would never again say the words, “I am busy.” And because I stopped saying the words, I began to stop thinking, “I am busy”! I’m not trying to say I’m such a holy person. I love my sleep, I promise you.
I decided too that if I needed a nap, I would happily take it. I had a very tall desk and a high chair, and I had a little spot under my desk, so if at two in the afternoon I needed a rest, I would lie on the floor and take a ten-minute nap.
You also have to recognize that sometimes you just can’t do every job. In the preface of Dear Lama Zopa, a compilation of letters to Rinpoche and his responses, Ven. Holly said at any given time Rinpoche had a folder of two thousand letters: two thousand human beings from around the world asking for advice!
Unlike us, Rinpoche never got upset about it, he never got stressed. Rinpoche might work for weeks on one letter – a prisoner received one of 45 typed pages! – and one of my friends who had cancer got her answer two years later: she said the timing was perfect!
Rinpoche worked day and night – he had so many projects I just couldn’t believe it, he didn’t sleep – but he was always smiling, always cracking jokes.
All I can say is it’s good to know there’s a possibility to have two thousand letters that are your responsibility and never be anxious and stressed! Wow.
The point is you can only do what you can. It doesn’t mean the work’s not important, but we get this sense of neurotic responsibility, this guilt – “I’m a bad person” – all this stuff so deep in our brain we can’t even hear it.
So much of this is the layers and layers and layers of very fast, tightly built-in viewpoints all centered around “poor me.” It takes a while to unpack it all. Meanwhile, be reasonable, do what you can, and try to have enthusiasm.
And then go to bed and sleep like a baby – and get up next morning and just keep going.