Worldview Community Blog

There is a well-known maxim in the business world that business owners tend to spend too much time working IN their business and not enough time working ON it. For example, they spend too much time moving merchandise without checking to see if it is the right merchandise, or even the right market. Such businesses are inevitably amongst the 90% or so that do not survive the first 5 years.

This same question applies to our personal lives. Carl Jung once quipped of how we spend our lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover at the top that it’s against the wrong wall.  You may know from experience (or at least in your imagination) just how devastating that can be to find that you’ve spent your life pursuing the wrong goals. Is it any wonder the mid-life crisis syndrome has reached pandemic proportions.

This conundrum also offers insight into the apathy of our youth. Apathy is ultimately a symptom of a deeper condition of meaninglessness. Imagine a teenager looking around at all the standard walls offered by our culture (various career choices, politics, religious life, home-maker and parenting, etc) and seeing quite clearly that none of them equate to a happy life. Examples abound of miserable people with their ladders up against every possible wall. Our teenagers may ask us, why bother to begin? How do we truthfully answer that question?

We might begin by observing that the choice of which wall is less important than the intention of the one who climbs.  If the intention is to gain wealth and power as a means to happiness, then the top of every ladder is assured to be a disappointment. If the intention is to prove to others that you can do “it”, then similarly, the top of the ladder will be empty and meaningless. If the intention however is to enjoy the climb, and to achieve excellence so that you might ultimately serve the wellbeing of others, then all ladders are almost equal, and they are all good.

Note, “almost” equal. The difference between one ladder (one career choice, one study path) over another is the question of what Buddhists call “Right Livelihood”. If you put your ladder up against the wall of pointless consumerism, the manufacture of unhealthy food, the creation of mind-numbing video games, or marketing to children, chances are you will struggle to feel good about yourself when the penny finally drops. In the end, it’s not all about you. You are responsible for the consequences of what you contribute, and if you profit through the suffering of others, the Buddha within will not smile upon you.

So what does it mean in real terms to stand back and check which wall your ladder is up against? To use a metaphor, it’s the same process as going on a holiday. From afar, you have a chance to look back on your daily life and assess its qualities. That same process can occur in your own mind, at any moment you choose. But first, you must disengage from focusing on your usual obsessions. Only then can you take the broader view of what you are actually doing with your life.

The actual practice is called mindfulness meditation. It’s the practice of being present with your breath, in the present moment, as you watch your usual obsessions arise within your awareness. Those obsessions might be things that need doing, or persistent emotions, or feelings like worry, anxiety, stress or even despair. From this place of witnessing, you might notice sensations in your body when you allow yourself to think certain things. You will probably notice agitation, and hear a compelling voice urging you to stop wasting time and get on with “it”.

With practice, you will eventually become more at home as the one who witnesses what is arising in your awareness, rather than the usual habit of tumbling into obsessing with whatever happens to come up. From this place of witnessing, you are empowered to work ON your life. You are empowered to make choices about where you put your life energy.

You are still free to allow yourself to work IN your life… to tumble into immersion with something that has arisen in your awareness, but you do so consciously. When you work IN your life in that way, you take full ownership of what happens in your life. You lose identification with the victim, and become the protagonist of the greatest story of all… the story of YOUR life.

Worldview offers workshops that include mindfulness meditation skills. To learn more, click here.