There are three magic steps to contentment: own less, do less, say no. No
slows you down, but in today’s thinking you are supposed to be ready and
willing to take on any challenge and stay "up to speed" at all times. We are
taught that saying no may result in missing out on a choice. We are under
pressure to own more electronic devices that will help us do more in less time
and allow us to log on to an almost limitless range of choices. We have become
electronically enabled to say yes to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
No matter what the choice, it is assumed that those with the most choices
are more likely to be winners. We seldom ever really feel mentally "offline"
and free of the tyranny of choice. We are kept on an electronic leash by
beepers and cell (mobile) phones. This leads to a lack of calm satisfaction
that eventually creates distress. Calmness requires much more attention to
what our life is really for and to what ends our new technoterrorism is
leading us.
Indeed the chronically calm are viewed with suspicion. They must be
refusing to follow the rules of life engagement, having given up. Or they must
be too ignorant or lazy to create momentum. Unless you are in perpetual mental
motion and always thinking ahead, something must be wrong.
This has become a modern sickness. We end up with constantly racing minds
that keep going even when they seem at rest – in psychological absenteeism. A
quick definition is being mentally at home when we should be working and
mentally at work when we should be focusing on home. The American Institute of
Stress states that this causes over $200 billion worth of losses for American
business annually. (They ignore the pain this causes family and friends –
there’s no monetary value to that, apparently.)
This is another definition of toxic success. Have the ends been worth it
and has it made you feel as if you are thriving? Only you can answer.
The perpetual mental motion of toxic success results in a form of
motion sickness, the feeling of being constantly mentally buffeted about by
the turbulence of daily pressures. While you have read that reducing this
motion sickness is primarily a matter of thinking differently about how and
why you live and work, many ask for "behavioral prescriptions" to help get
them started and keep their attentions on a calmer way of living.
A typical request is: "You can’t get me detoxed without giving me something
to do. I know I have to think differently, but can’t you at least give some
more things to try that will help me remember to calm down my thinking? Just a
few gimmicks, that’s all I ask."
If we fail to calm down, we are in danger of becoming like the tree in poet
Shel Silverstein’s classic story The Giving Tree. There is a special
message for the hurry up crowd about the dangers of not being able to say no
and the risks of giving too much, too fast, and for too long to too many, only
to discover, too late, that it has all been for much too little. We end up
feeling as if we are constantly being taken from, until we are left feeling
exhausted and— much like the "giving tree’s" dead and totally used-up
stump - lifeless and used up.
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