Cultivate The Patience To Sit With The Problem

When you are tired, overwhelmed, stressed, beginning (or coming back to) a big project, there is no replacement for Cultivating The Patience To Sit With The Problem. The ability to feel that exhaustion, stress, sense of overwhelm, and simply sit through it. Literally letting it wash over you.

One of the mistakes that I have made repeatedly in my life, is engaging with the stress in those moments. Allowing those emotions to dictate my actions. For example, the sheer complexity or expanse of most projects that I do frequently has me overwhelmed. That feeling of being overwhelmed, might lead to some form of stress, which I respond to usually with focused, hard work.

However, sometimes that creates an emotional feedback loop — many moving pieces has me overwhelmed, so I work with frenetic energy, which reveals more pieces, increases the scope of the task, leading to more frenetic energy, and so on.

An inefficient and ineffective feedback loop, when all is said and done.

I have found that a far superior path is to experience whatever has you overwhelmed without engaging in it immediately. Allow the pieces, variables, complexity, and extent to wash over you as you allow yourself time simply come to terms with what you have to do.

Then, once you can figure out what a good step is to take, begin to act patiently and calmly without allowing that frenetic energy to feed into your mind, emotions, and actions in a negative way.

A Stressful Situation Does Not Require Stress As A Solution

Do not respond to stress, with frenetic action that is characterized by stress. Feeling that stress, that pressure, is inevitable. Moreover, in my experience, it is what you want. If you do not feel activated by your work, if you are not experiencing some pressure to do the work — and do it well, quickly — then maybe it is not that important.

I found this to be the case for me. I have a great deal more excitement and enjoyment when I have something on the line. If I can do a task with no emotion, no pressure, I do not view that as a good thing anymore. That just means my task is irrelevant.

Truly meaningful work, often has pressure and stress come along with it. It is how the game works. Athletics and competition is exciting because of this pressure. There is no feeling like it. Crowd. Stakes. Performance in the moment. Adversaries. It makes it all worthwhile.

However, the way to deal with it is not to match the stress in your actions. But to control it and channel that energy into careful, intentional, deliberate action. To build up that pressure inside of you, and then to use it in what you are doing.

Learn The Patience To Sit With A Problem

There is no replacement for learning the patience to approach a more relaxed mindset, regardless of what you are feeling. Literally just sitting quietly, and taking a few breaths even for a couple moments changes everything.

When you are dealing with complex, large, extensive, high-stakes projects, situations, or moments, your response will determine the result. It is important to learn that to be overwhelmed doesn’t mean we cannot act well. It doesn’t mean we cannot perform well, and at a high calibre anyways. In fact, this is what all great performers do.

Imagine being Robert Oppenheimer trying to organize people to create a scientific breakthrough before the Nazis did the same and dropped a bomb on them. Imagine that stress. Or the stress of any soldier every. Or Kobe Bryant playing in the playoffs with criminal charges and court proceedings hanging over him.

They all still performed.

Being overwhelmed is solved by time and progress. Productive work results in progress which dissipates stress, because we are acting in a way that reduces entropy, creates order from chaos, and moves us towards our goal.