You don’t even have to press the easy button, you just have to stop pressing the hard button.
Avoid extreme burnout and a huge emergency room bill.
Discover how I went from constant anxiety and pacing at 2:00 AM to mental health. I now experience more peace and joy than I ever thought possible. If you want to stop the constant stress and learn to work in a new way, read this article.
What if accomplishment is simpler than you think?
This article is the third in a series about easeful accomplishment. Read the first one here.
The “Easy Button” is a joke found at office supplies stores or in commercials. It is a big red button that says “Easy” when pressed. The button is good for a laugh, but it doesn’t actually make work any easier. When pressed, nothing happens.
Many achievers wish this easy button actually worked. If only they had a real easy button that would make challenge and effort disappear.
They know the button is a piece of plastic, but they are in search of a metaphorical easy button. Anything to make work more seamless and smooth. They want to discover the tactic, tool, or mindset that makes work easy. They want a hack that shortcuts the difficulty of creation.
If you search for your easy button, get curious. Start to suspect that you have been going about it the wrong way. What if this search took you further away from the easeful accomplishment you seek, and working without stress is simpler than you think.
The Hard Button
You don’t even have to press the easy button. You just have to stop unconsciously pressing the hard button.
Most achievers are so busy trying to find the easy button that they don’t realize they are holding down the hard button.
They go to gurus and self help books for techniques and tools that will help optimize their work. They learn hack after hack, but find they don’t work. Even if they do find the right tool or hack, they won’t be able to go anywhere. Finding the easy button won’t make a difference when they limit themselves. Even the best techniques in the world won’t work with the hard button pressed.
No wonder we have a burnout epidemic. Everyone has the brakes on as they work.
This is much like slamming on the gas and brake pedals at the same time in a running car. Not only won’t you go anywhere, you will damage the engine in the process. The harder you push forward, the more friction you create in your system. Are you damaging your body and mind because you don’t realize you have your foot on the brake?
Burnout
I have first hand experience with extreme burnout. Pressing on the gas and brake at the same time, I created intense friction. Frustrated that I wasn’t going anywhere, I stomped harder and harder on the gas pedal of my mind. The more I pressured myself forward, the more internal resistance I created. I only stopped when I crashed and burned.
My body gave me signs that I needed to slow down. I developed extreme anxiety and acid reflux. Pacing at 2 AM, I was so afraid. I was almost admitted into a mental institution twice during that time. One weekend, I was so desperate that I checked myself into the Emergency room. 5,000 dollars later, the doctor told me that I have anxiety. The medical system couldn’t help me with what I was doing it to myself with my own mind. Including missed work and medical bills, I lost at least 15,000 dollars. All because I didn’t realize I was holding down the hard button.
As I recovered, I learned an understanding that helped me break the cycle of burnout. Not only do I operate with less stress, I now work with a natural joy and enthusiasm.
You must let off the brake. If you don’t, you might end up like me. If I can save you from pain, financial loss, and fear with this article, it will be worth every word.
You don’t have to go through cycles of burnout. What you want to create will come through automatically when you stop pressing the hard button. Yet most people think that pressing the hard button is the only way to get shit done. Open yourself to a new way of achieving and a new way of thinking.
Work Without Stress
What if it were possible to work without stress? Not only is easeful work possible, the less pressure and stress, the more we will achieve. Despite what we may think, stress and work don’t have to go together. It does seem like they bound up with each other. We might even confuse them enough to think they are one and the same.
The truth is that stress and work are independent variables. One can exist without the other. You are able to stress outside of work. You can stress your brains out at home or on a vacation. So many of us make a habit of wasting our free time with stress.
There are also some people, shocking I know, who don’t stress out about their jobs. They work with clarity and ease. They might even love what they do.
Suspecting that work doesn’t have to go with stress is the first step toward letting go of the hard button. This understanding tends to live in our psychological blind spot. It seems like work and stress must go together. They tend to show up at the party at the same time. This is because we are more likely to have stressful thoughts at work or about work.
If you want to have more energy, start to see stress and work as separate. The true cause of stress is something else entirely.
The Energy Leak
We tend to have much more energy when we aren’t siphoning it away from ourselves. Stress and worry consume a large amount of energy. We innocently use our own psychological energy to create stress, fear, and upset.
Like a muscle contracts using cellular energy, our minds contract using mental energy. If we contract our muscles all the time, they will be tense, tired, and sore. The same is true with our minds.
If you feel exhausted, this might be the reason why. You use your mental muscles to worry and stress while you work. Pressing the hard button is an action you don’t know you are taking.
If stress and tension are an action, then ease is found in non-action. Ease is an absence of stress. This absence is at the very core of your being. You are not your stress. Stresslessness is the default state. That is great news. You don’t have to search for the easy button. You have it already when you don’t press the hard button.
What, Me Worry?
There is a part of us that thinks that stress, tension, and worry is a good idea. In a world that we don’t control, worry is an action that we do have control over. Even though stress and worry don’t do anything, they give us an illusionary semblance of having control. Worry is something to grasp on to when it feels like we are tumbling through the air.
Worry seems to keep the sky up. When we worry, the sky doesn’t fall. This might look like it confirms to us that worry works. Yet the sky wouldn’t fall if we didn’t worry. Even if the sky does fall (sometimes things do come crashing down) worry would not have prevented it anyway.
We know this intuitively, but the emotions that come with stress, tension, and worry can be self validating. We experience our worry in our bodies, and the strength of the feeling makes it seem important. Emotion operates like an experience highlighter. Yet our feelings don’t come from the experience itself. Where do they really come from? Find out in the next section.
If you understand the illusion of security that worry creates, it won’t look like a good idea anymore.
Where Stress Really Comes From
Stress comes from thought. That is why we can stress out on a vacation. We are capable of stressful thoughts at any time. Because of thought, two people have different reactions to the exact same event. A job that stresses one person will excite another. Even the same job and same situations can be business as usual one day and catastrophic the next. The variable and the difference: thought.
We think we know this already. While we may admit that some stress comes from our thoughts, we think the idea has limitations. We also think some stress must be inherent to the challenging events in our lives. A certian amount of stress has to go along with accomplishment. Stress feels very real, and it does seems like it comes from the conditions of our work. This is an illusion created by how we see when we are under stress. We look for causes, causes outside of ourselves. Yes, we might be willing to grant that thought creates some stress, but most stress must be inherent to life. Right?
The Source
What if more of the stress we experience came from our thoughts than we are willing to admit?
What if all stress comes from thought?
As humans, we find ourselves in various situations of life. It is never the situations that determine how we feel. Instead, our thoughts do that. That is why our feelings towards work can change. Work can seem like a walk in the park one day and a barefoot tiptoe through shattered glass the next. But for our thinking, we could always work in an effortless flow. If we don’t press the hard button with the way that we think, work is easy.
Stress is the feeling of worried thinking.
One hundred percent of stress comes from thought. Stress, tension, and worry literally can’t come from anywhere else.
Consider this idea for a moment. Try to look for exceptions. Put what seems true against what is actually true. If all stress came from thought, what would that mean for your life?
It would simplify stress down to one source. One that you can influence. While you can’t control most of what you think, you can control how much energy you give your thinking. Without this understanding, you are at the mercy of stressful life events. With it, you can find peace even in the face of life’s challenges
Realizing stress only comes from thought is the secret to easeful achievement.
This understanding is your key to psychological freedom.
Hard Button Signals
Urgency, pressure, worry, and stress signal you when you press on the hard button. You are able to feel these in your body. Thoughts may lie to us, but feeling always tells the truth. You can judge yourself for not doing enough. Your thoughts convince you that you are not burning yourself out when your body is in red alert. You have the ability to gaslight yourself.
While you might not be able to believe your thoughts, you can always trust your emotions. Only, they aren’t telling you what you think. Your emotions can’t tell you anything about the outside world. They only ever tell you about your internal world. Your feelings tell you how you are using your mind.
Remember, stress doesn’t come from the situation, but from your thoughts. Stressful feelings guide you to when you are using your mind in a way that is stressful. Feelings are the most accurate signal for when you are pressing the hard button. When work feels easeful, keep going. When you feel overwhelmed or emotional, it is time to question your thoughts.
This is helpful. It means that pressure, urgency, and stress aren’t emotions you must brushed aside or battled away. They become friends when you see them as redirections. When it doesn’t feel right, change the way you are using your mind. Your stressful feelings point the way back to flow. The way it feels when you press the hard button will guide you back to making work easy.
Emotions are an in the moment guide to your current state of mind.
How to Stop Pressing the Hard Button?
The best way to make work easy is to not press the hard button in the first place. The second best way is to stop pressing the hard button.
You must first realize you are pressing the hard button to stop. You don’t know what you don’t know. If you never know you are holding down the hard button, you can’t let go. If you truly realize the ways that you are pressing the hard button, then letting go is easy. No techniques, habits, or skills needed.
As you approach your work, get curious. Explore new ways of thinking. Ways of working and new paths forward will make sense to you when you stop making it hard for yourself.
There are an unlimited number of ways to make it hard. Each person has their favorite hard button that is unique to them. My favorite way is to doubt myself. What’s yours?
While the hard button differs, the easy button is the same for everyone. It is the absence of the hard.
Easy is easy, but too many achievers make it hard. They spend so much effort trying to find the easy way, the hack, that they make it harder for themselves. By searching, they cover up what they are searching for. This is because they are searching outside of themselves for the easy way. They will only ever find ease by letting go of resistance within themselves.
Stop making easy so hard.
Letting Go
Notice the feeling of pressing the hard button. When you discover that you are making it hard, don’t try to figure it out. Instead, let your mind settle, slow down, and clear. Remember, the true source of the difficulty is your current thinking, so more thinking won’t help. Sometimes, the passing of time brings clarity. This is because, with time, new ways of thinking often arise. Let go of your current thinking to release the hard button.
Letting go is not an action. It is the opposite of action, really, the ending of an action. While there isn’t an action to letting go, there is a feeling to it. Start to recognize the feeling of release. It feels wonderful. Spirits lift. Your mood becomes elevated naturally and for no good reason. Work becomes easeful, not because of what you are doing to make it easy, but from what you stop doing to make it hard.
When you do realize, it all seems so silly and obvious. You can’t believe you have had your hand on the hard button for all these years. Until this realization occurs, bring a patient and curious mind to your life. Be open to new understandings and insights.
Relax and bring less seriousness to each task. Realize that ease, flow, and creativity is our default state when we don’t take ourselves away from it. Worry, seriousness, and pressure can only show up when we contract our minds. The irony is that we will achieve more when we aren’t pressuring ourselves to achieve more.
Feeling it Out
There are so many ways to press the hard button that it would take a whole book to begin to codify them. While it can be helpful to know, you don’t need to identify what hard button you are pressing to let it go. You only need to know how to drop your current thinking.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to drop the thoughts that make achievement difficult. I can point you in the direction, but you must discover it for yourself.
This is much like learning how to ride a bicycle. I could instruct for hours on how to ride, but it won’t do any good. Intellectual understanding is not helpful here. You need to get on the bike to learn. I can show you that you have a bike. I can tell you how it works, but you are the one that must get a feel for it.
Here’s the secret: you already know how to drop what makes work hard. You already know how to let go. You just think you don’t.
Explore a New Way
If you use stress and pressure to grind your way to achievement, explore a new way. You can always go back to working while pressing the hard button. Recognize that the way you have been using your mind isn’t working. Learn how it feels to use your mind without resistance.
Trust that ease and flow are as natural to you as breathing. They are and will be, always.
If you want help making work as easy as pressing the Easy Button, let’s have a conversation.
If you would like to learn more about this topic, listen to this discussion I had with a podcast guest about this topic.
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