career = satisfaction ≠ sustainability

Tuesday 7 November 2023

I am starting with Neami at Safe Space tomorrow and have some time today to relax a bit, make some space for it. I’ll be working as a Peer Support Worker, responding to people presenting at the service in varying degrees of psychological distress. It’s not counselling or even directly therapeutic ~ peer support roles are explicitly non-clinical. I will be sitting with people as a person with lived experience of recovery from acute and chronic mental-health challenges, to give them hope for recovery and support them as they see fit. 

Thankfully, I am ahead with TAFE assignments and would like to get ahead with some course reading but that doesn’t feel like a priority compared to preparing for tomorrow, which includes looking at some of the documents and research I have found and would like to study. 

I’m starting a folder for these documents because: 1.) I am interested and curious and taking this seriously and I consider it an investment because I’d like to work in this area as a lifelong career; and 2.) it is a peer worker’s role to be aware of these documents and current research, to support the purpose of advocating for systemic change in the mental-health system. No small bikkies round here eh! 

The gist of the following reflection if it’s a bit TL;DR is that I have a deeply satisfying spiritual practice now, which I didn’t have during my first career, in publishing. The Zen practice I have now is the central and only source of true satisfaction, and on this foundation of extant satisfaction I can build a successful career in a helping profession and not be dependent upon that success for satisfaction. I will not be dependent upon thanks and accolades to feel satisfaction or success, and therefore will be less susceptible to burnout when sufficient thanks are inevitably not forthcoming. It will be inherently unsustainable to work in this profession being dependent on thanks to keep going, so I feel very grateful that I have found the Zen practice because it makes it more likely I can ‘stay the distance’ in what is bound to be a career that is as exponentially rewarding as it is challenging.

1. careerism + contentment

Josh Korda from Dharma Punx says in his book Unsubscribe that the dharma can liberate us from addictions like consumerism and what he calls ‘careerism’, and I’ve been thinking about this today. 

I understand that addictions tend to be the result of habitual tendencies to escape from reality or modify our consciousness so that reality seems more bearable. And since I came back from retreat recently I have been considerably more aware of the contents of the monkey mind and I’m grateful for that because the sooner I notice I have wandered away from the present (imagining the future or recalling the past), which is a habitual escapist tendency we all share, the sooner I can come back to reality. The more time I spend in reality (in touch with the present moment), the better I am able to learn how to cope with reality. 

Without frequent contact with reality, how can we learn to cope with and adapt to it?

And I noticed during the retreat that unless something immediately stressful was going on that needs attention (which there wasn’t, for seven days, it being a retreat), the present is the best place to be. I noticed that I would feel anxiety or discomfort or dissatisfaction immediately upon wandering into monkey mind and then when I caught myself and came back to MU in the present (in the tradition I practise in, the mantra MU is our object of meditation ~ similar to the breath in other traditions), the anxiety would dissipate because I had gone back to the reality of the moment, from where I could do nothing and didn’t need to do anything about the situation I had remembered or imagined. The situation was both geographically and temporarily distant and therefore beyond the range of my influence and therefore not worth my time and energy, compared with what was happening right there in that moment.

It doesn’t mean I don’t plan for the future or learn from the past. It just means I can do these things more consciously and intentionally, rather than habitually and compulsively as a maladaptive tendency that formed as a way of escaping the boring/painful present. 

Another way to say it is that MU is a refuge from anxiety or worry and regret or nostalgia. This is a ‘negative image’ of the same idea that I would feel anxiety or discomfort or dissatisfaction immediately upon wandering into monkey mind. In MU there is no anxiety ~ it is a totally neutral object of meditation.

Since the retreat I notice more frequently that I have drifted from the present into story and can bring myself back sooner. The result is a deeper and more-frequent sense of contentment because I am just present without adding commentary to a reality that doesn’t need anything added or subtracted. 

Folks have asked me what I got from the retreat and I haven’t been able to answer easily because the benefits are subtle and metaphysical or psychological, hard to describe. Our landlord asked me today and it came to mind that the benefit is a deeper and more-consistent sense of contentment (not to be confused with complacency) and even a sense of acceptant satisfaction in the sense of dukkha, the OG of Buddhism translated as either ‘suffering’ or ‘dissatisfaction’. Not quite liberation from samsara, but a growing sense of equanimity about being here whether I like it or not. 

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I say all this 👆🏼 because it was appreciated timing to go on the retreat almost immediately before starting this new job. I feel renewed and refreshed in a mundane sense. At a deeper more-spiritual level, I have realised or remembered this morning that the contentment resulting from dedicated practice is worth more than any job satisfaction or career kudos I might get from working in the mental-health space.

I didn’t have contact with the source of this satisfaction when I was working on my former career in publishing, and as a result I sought abiding satisfaction in work, where abiding satisfaction does not reside (outside the self). 

I’m glad to have this practice now because it is the central and only source of true satisfaction, and on this foundation of extant satisfaction I can build a successful career in a helping profession and not be dependent upon that success for satisfaction, without falling into the trap of seeking satisfaction where it does not exist (in external things and activities like work or even relationships)

***

I didn’t know I would end up journalling about this today, but I’m glad I did. To say my practice and study of Zen meditation is a resource that will keep me grounded and resourced as I embark on the journey of professionally helping those in psychological distress is a bit too glib (consider Zen is a genuine transpersonal practice and not just a means for reducing stress), but it’s also true: getting my satisfaction from the self (through meditation) will mean I don’t expect satisfaction (or thanks or accolades) from my work, clients or colleagues, and will mean my work as a peer practitioner will be more sustainable. I will be more likely to ‘stay the distance’, making an impact through meaningful work without a high risk of burnout and dissatisfaction.

So that’s what I came to write about today. 

I am starting in peer work tomorrow because for many years I have been wanting to learn about and help others learn about how to be happy and healthy in our challenging modern world. Truth is I have been doing peer work for most of my life and tomorrow is just a start on the journey to ‘professionalise a lifestyle’, as I put it to a colleague recently. 

There are few things truly worth doing with our time here, and cultivating genuine happiness (sukkha in the Buddhist parlance) is certainly among those few things, if not the only thing. We need to do other things while we are here, such as accommodate the inescapable reality of our current conditions (read: pay the bills, etc.) and I am grateful I might be able to ‘pay the bills’ doing something as meaningful as supporting others’ genuine subjective wellbeing.

2. research + advocacy

One of the documents I mentioned above is the Charter of Peer Support published by The Centre of Excellence in Peer Support (CEPS) in Victoria, Australia. It describes in detail what peer work actually is, and an understanding of this document (combined with work experience) will help me refine an elevator pitch I can use on the typical look confusion I encounter in others when I say I’m a peer worker. Even in some areas of the mental-health space it is still not quite understood what a peer worker brings to the table, but that’s a post for another time.

Some research I want to look at is about “dual diagnosis” of mental illness with addiction. This is interesting to me, because a first report from ​​the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health has shown that dual diagnoses are “The expectation not the exception”, which seems like a no-brainer for me (with lived experience) but may not be for others (perhaps those without lived experience of either, which surely is the exception not the rule, these days). It’s going to be interesting, as I start working in this sector, to see what sort of no-brainers from the lived experience perspective need to be explicitly supported by research for the service commissioners to take them seriously.