How are you coping with feelings of deficiency or emptiness?
 

If the question is asked and answered honestly, just about every human being will admit to feeling some degree of personal deficiency or lack— the notion that they are somehow not all that they can be. They feel empty, worthless or valueless in some way. As a result, it’s a universal human experience to suffer feelings of confusion, frustration, fear, resentment, guilt or even shame.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to refer to this feeling of being ‘less than you could be’, or ‘not being good enough’ as a hole in your life. Experiencing the hole is like feeling a cloud coming over your sun: you feel you lack worth; you feel empty inside.

To avoid this feeling, many people act as phonies and frauds; others take the aggressive road, becoming bullies; and still others stay fearful and submissive, deferential to all authority. It doesn’t have to be that way. The hole is a natural state that can promote conscious and healthy growth, if dealt with openly and honestly.

The hole of deficiency can be filled

The question is not whether to fill the hole, but how you choose to do it. How far you will experience inner peace and happiness in your life is a function of how you choose to fill your own hole.

There are two principal ways people tend to go about ‘hole filling’—from without or from within. The former results in digging a deeper hole; the latter results in the hole reducing itself—even eliminating itself altogether.

Filling from without

When people look outside themselves for a quick-fix that will bring a short-term feeling of ‘OK-ness’, they either inflate who they are to deal with the emptiness, or try to fill the hole with stuff, stuff and more stuff. Many of them spend their whole life seeking approval and security through obsessive activities designed to cause other people to supply the sense of ‘OK-ness’ they lack. The narcissist is but one example of an individual who tries to fill their hole from the outside with admiration and recognition.

People like this always need to stand out and be seen to be ‘somebody’. Filling their hole of deficiency drives them to try to be the center of the Universe through a life characterized by vanity, arrogance and egotism. The result, however, is to dig themselves into an ever deepening hole that requires more and more filling.

Those who try filling the hole from without soon find that the hole never is filled. They try ever more frantically to fill their hole, but whatever they try seems to have less and less impact, like needing more of a drug to gain the same ‘high’. Hole-filling for them is a never-ending battle, exhausting on every level, as their hole sinks deeper and their need for approval grows stronger.

Filling from within

Filling the hole from within requires a conscious and honest exploration of your sense of deficiency, while accepting that some such feelings of lack are natural. By exploring from inside, you can acquire an understanding of why we carry such ‘holes’ around with us, and what supports their gradual removal. If you work steadily from this place of acceptance, the hole begins to fill itself.

The tools and practices used to fill the hole from within include journaling, self-reflection, meditation, silence, and deep inner questioning. The more your hole is explored, then reduced in size, the more your inner strength and courage arise to allow you to be yourself, without your ego needing any phony packaging or shoring up. You won’t need to put on the cloak of a false self and pretend to be somebody other than who you are.

What we resist, persists. When we resist the hole and look to fill it from the outside, the hole will persist and grow deeper. When we allow the feelings connected to the hole and work with these feelings, the hole will begin to fill itself. You can choose to reduce and then eliminate the hole, or dig a deeper one. It’s up to you.

Here are some questions to start the process of ‘hole-filling’:

• In what ways do you feel deficient or empty? Why do you feel that way? How do you feel about feeling the way you do?
• Do you try to fill your hole from outside by activities designed to make you feel secure and have some sense of ‘OK-ness’? What does all this activity get you?
• Do you ever feel like a phony? Do you ever consciously choose to be a fake? If so, why?
• Do you often feel the need to be the life of the party, the ‘know-it-all’, the expert?
• Do you play small and try to be invisible much of the time? Do you often feel what you are and do is not enough in some way? Do you know why?
• What one or two baby steps can you take in the next week or two to explore your feelings around lack or deficiency and start allowing your hole to fill itself?

Technorati Tags: self-worth, coping with feelings of deficiency, building yourself up, developing greater courage, being yourself, self-acceptance

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lightworking
• Top Ten Components of a Balanced Life

If you don’t enjoy your day at work, you may need to look inward for a solution
 

There’s a lot of concentration today, quite correctly, on the need for organizations to provide a more humane working environment. But good working environments don’t make happy workers all by themselves. You can lead a horse to the water, open its mouth and force its nose below the surface, but you can’t make it swallow.

I am not saying that people actually want to be unhappy at work, but employees are not blank slates to be written on; they bring their emotional and intellectual baggage with them to work, just as they take it home again.

Let’s take a simple example; you’re a middle-level employee of a large organization, arriving at work on a Monday morning. What do we get if we open up your head and look inside? First, there’s the row you had with your spouse last night; you have an uncomfortable feeling it might start again when you get home. Parking the car, you remember that it has a problem you really must get fixed this week. Hope it’s not as expensive as last time; you really can’t afford another bill like that. Going through the door, your stomach tightens as you also remember you have an objective-setting meeting with your new boss later in the morning. That sort of meeting is never fun. Finally, you arrive at your floor and see Smith, a person you dislike rather a lot, smugly admiring his new office suite. You can’t understand why he ever got that promotion, but the word is that he’s popular with senior management and will go far. You might even wind up working for him. What then? Should you leave? Who would employ you? And the first email message you come across is to call someone in the HR department as a matter of urgency—someone you’ve never heard of. Oh dear, what can that possibly be about?

Understanding your ego

So it goes on. In a way you are probably half-unconscious of, you’re tired, irritable and worried and you haven’t yet done a stroke of work; or rather, it’s not you who are worried. It’s your ego. In Latin, ‘ego’ simply meant ‘I’. It was taken over as a way of translating Sigmund Freud’s expression “Das Ich” into English. It means essentially the conscious, rational mind—the sense of self and individualism. It’s used in a rather vaguer sense in popular psychology, and in Buddhism it’s the thing that causes all our trouble and unhappiness.

Don’t be nervous or leave this article now. Buddhism is actually just a highly-sophisticated system of mental training, developed by practical people over thousands of years. What Buddhists say, is that your ego doesn’t really exist. What you think of as yourself—the person who is angry, upset, disappointed, hopeful, uncertain—is just a collection of noises in your head, patterns others have imprinted on you, and fears and fantasies about things that haven’t happened yet and probably won’t.

It’s not really you who are upset about Smith’s promotion, it’s your ego. You’re not really worried about answering questions on your expenses—your ego remembers the humiliation of being told off when you were a child. If you can still the chatter of what Buddhists call the “monkey mind,” you will find the real you underneath all that. Until you can, all this debate about multi-tasking is rather beside the point. You are probably ‘doing’ twenty things at once in your head, at a minimum, almost all of them negative and useless.

Are you here, or somewhere in the future or the past?

Notice that none of the events I’ve listed is happening right now. In fact, we are usually so obsessed with resentment of the past and fears about the future, that we forget that life is only a series of present moments. Unfortunately, the mind does not distinguish very well between things that are happening right now, and things that happened in the past or might happen in the future. So we relive events and anticipate events not only emotionally, but physically as well. In your head, you start running through what you are going to say to your boss and your throat tightens as though you were really there.

There is a simple cure for this; every time you have a though about the past or the future, if it’s negative, say to yourself: “I’m glad that’s not happening now”. Try it. You’ll be surprised. There are a few other things you can do also to still the chatter of the monkey mind, all extremely banal and none requiring any special equipment.

How to deal with your ‘monkey mind’

Sit still in your office chair for two minutes. I bet you can’t do it. Your mind is full of thoughts which have physical consequences. You start to think of Smith’s promotion and your jaw begins to clench and naturally you sit forward in your chair. If you can manage it though, your mind will be quieter when you have finished.

Take a document, any document, and read it through without your mind wandering. If your mind wanders, notice where it goes to. “It’s a report by so-and-so. Pompous idiot. I remember that meeting—or was it somebody else; wait, I think I’ve still got a record of that meeting in my notebook . . .”

Train yourself to sit motionless for five seconds when new e-mail arrives. E-mail exists for you, not the other way round. Slowly, the hormones of fear and excitement that your body naturally secretes, and you are only vaguely conscious of, will start to be produced less often.

Buddhists have always known that you can’t repress thoughts, and you can’t think of nothing. All the Zen arts, from archery to the tea ceremony, are designed to still and calm the mind and teach concentration by focusing on one thing. So think of one thing, and you will not think of many things.

Let’s take the most banal example imaginable; lunch. Do you eat a sandwich at your desk? Then notice the sandwich. What’s in it, what the texture is, what it tastes like, how many bites it took you to finish it. It’s not enlightenment, necessarily, but it’s a start.

When you give up the incessant mental chatter, when you learn to concentrate, you’ll not only work better, you’ll be happier.

Technorati Tags: focus, concentration, being in the now, stilling the mind, Buddhism in the office, learning to concentrate

Introducing a new ‘author’ for Slow leadership

Ever since we moved to Arizona, I have had a soft spot for coyotes. We see them fairly often around here, at all times of day. We hear their ‘concerts’ in the early evening, especially in Spring, when the high-pitched yips of the pups are added to the howling and yapping of their elders. Most look well fed and in good condition — though that doesn’t stop them from being a significant threat to people’s small pets.

Most of you will already know that Coyote is a major figure in much Native American folklore. He’s a trickster, a bit of a rogue, always trying new ways to avoid effort and often getting into problems as a result. But he’s also a significant part of the creation, often adding oddities and creating quirks and alterations in the Creator’s designs — more often than not to the benefit of mankind.

This ambivalence — part rogue and joker, part wise and creating spirit — was what drew me to the character of Coyote in the first place. It seemed particularly relevant to our world today, where few things are quite what they seem and even the best of intentions tend to run into the law of unexpected consequences. We certainly need wisdom, but not always of the all-too-serious, moralistic kind typically handed out by academic professionals and self-appointed gurus alike. We need something more earthy and practical — and hopefully more fun to hear about. Read the full story

When everything becomes a ‘definite possibility’, nothing useful can come of any of it

In a time when stress is adversely coursing through so many people’s experience, ruining their quality of life, why are folks reluctant to slow down and stop living life at 90 miles an hour? Why are they unwilling to make healthy choices for the sake of their own well-being? Why is lifestyle change such a threat, such an overwhelming and fearful challenge? Why do people feel such a need to keep their options open and consider everything and everyone — as one client said to me recently about an event he was considering ­— “a definite possibility? A definite possibility? What’s that?

Why are life and lifestyle choices so painful? Why does every door have to remain open? Why does one need to consider ‘every’ option? Rather than cutting back, or narrowing down choices in the face of overwhelming stress, juggling options seems to be the day-to-day self-management tactic that has so people many feeling trapped and fearful. Yet, they trudge on.

Whether it’s an attachment or add-on they’ll probably never use for a new digital camera; or a continued relationship with an individual with whom they have nothing in common; or staying connected to a Yahoo or other on-line group to which they haven’t contributed in years; or an event for which they have season tickets and never attend, there’s a reason that keeps them going on going on. A reason that explains their fear of loss if they let go. Read the full story

Part 3 of a series on simple ways of de-stressing your life

 
This is part 3 of my short series of ideas and suggestions for taking some of the stress out of your life and bringing back a better sense of balance and enjoyment.

De-stressing Idea Number 6: Eat quality food, not junk

This is such a tough one. When the work/life balance gets tough, the tough end up reaching for the chocolate. With a bit more organisation however, it isn’t an impossible task to have healthier foods to eat.

Dietary reductions you can make to help your body cope with stress include reducing or eliminating your caffeine intake — including the caffeine found in sodas, cola, energy drinks and chocolate. Caffeine is a stimulant that can make your body as tense as it would be if under stress and elevate your heart rate and blood pressure. Over-indulging in alcohol will make you feel relaxed at the time, but eventually produce the opposite effect. It can also affect any medications you are taking. High fat and high sugar foods — typical in ‘comfort eating’ — contribute little to your body’s nutritional requirements, so it’s vital that you are aware of what you eat, how much you eat, and when you eat it. Read the full story

Part 2 of a series on simple ways of de-stressing your life

 
Here comes part 2 of my short series of ideas and suggestions for taking some of the stress out of your life and bringing back a better sense of balance and enjoyment.

De-stressing Idea Number 3: Take time out

As your work load and responsibilities increase and your free time is filled with house work, childcare and chores, finding ‘me time’ can feel like an impossibility. You are interrupted all the time through reacting to the needs of others; your brain still buzzes with unfinished business that affects your sleep and you run the risk of exhaustion, which in turn repeats the cycle by increasing the output of stress hormones.

Your time out — maybe just half an hour per day — must be spent doing something you enjoy. My friend Jill likes to read a magazine; Dean likes to do a work-out; Kent goes for a bike ride; and Sonia weeds her yard by the coast.

‘Me’ time can also be . . . nothing. For me sometimes, it is a big chunk of quiet. It is not that I don’t enjoy my work and I love being with my family, but I recognise the need to unplug the mobile phone, keep the TV turned off and just go outside and sit in the garden. On the other ‘me side’ hand, I also love spending time with my friends doing something relatively simple like going out for a movie or coffee — anything that isn’t related to work or responsibilities or sensible ‘to do’ lists. Read the full story

Part 1 of a series on de-stressing your life

Work/Life balance is more than a buzzword, it’s a way of life. The word ‘balance’ doesn’t necessarily mean an even divide between work and life; instead, ‘balance’ means successfully managing all the responsibilities you have in all areas of your life.

Despite all the technology and labour saving devices that we have, and our parents and grandparents lacked, we work longer hours and have more time poverty than any other era in history. We also struggling with ways to find ‘quality’ time for ourselves and our families among the never-ending chores: work demands, commuting, home, kids and social and community commitments.

The failure many experience in achieving any real work/life balance means that family life can suffer and so can your physical, emotional and mental health. The huge increases in illnesses such as chronic back ache, clinical depression, heart disease, blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and obesity, are all indicators that our current work/life balance is way out of whack. Read the full story

Hey, Guys, haven’t some of us been saying this all along?

According to the New York Times, a group of major hi-tech corporations are getting together to fund a nonprofit group that will study information overload, publicize the problem and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with cellphone calls, e-mail and instant messages that destroy people’s attention spans and hurt their productivity (“Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast”).

I guess the message is finally getting through — ironically to the very businesses whose products most help cause the mess in the first place.

It seems that the typical IT person, sitting all day in front of the computer screen, “turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times.” It’s also estimated that “unnecessary interruptions” cost the US economy more that $650 billion each year. Read the full story

According to researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, white-collar psychopaths are the biggest villains in the average worker’s work and home life

We’re delighted to welcome a new author to Slow Leadership. Katherine Lockett is an Australian writer who lives in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. Her book, ‘Work/Life Balance for Dummies’ was published in Australia in 2008 and will be available in the United Kingdom in 2009.

They might not be axe-wielding murderous maniacs, but they can backstab, steal credit for your work, send late night emails long after work has ended or ignore you — all by misusing what used to be the office helpers: e-mail, the internet and text messages.

We already know that psychopaths have been intensely studied by psychiatrists, criminologists and behavioural analysts. They appear impressive to be communicators and networkers, yet also master manipulators.

Unfortunately, they rarely feel empathy or have the ability to maintain genuine and long-lasting relationships with either their co-workers or spouses.

I wonder how many of you are reading this and nodding your head in recognition at a current or former boss you’ve endured? Read the full story

Sometimes working excessive hours is imposed on you, but what about the choices that can make it habitual?

Philosophical Geek recently posted an article called: ‘How to work an 8-hour day‘. Some of the advice, though sound enough, was very familiar (Don’t waste time, don’t micro-manage, limit meetings); but two points struck me as far more interesting.

I know that many people are forced into excessive working hours by a combination of a macho corporate culture and poor management, but there’s little doubt that there’s collusion as well: situations where people choose to stay longer at the workplace out of ambition, fear, a warped sense of duty — or even boredom.

That’s the aspect of overwork covered by these two suggestions, and I think it’s worth exploring in depth. Read the full story