SELF-COERCION
Friday, Feb. 28, 2020
Pressure causes change.
Or does change cause pressure?
It’s a bit like that argument of whether global warming causes CO2 or if CO2 causes global warming … chicken/egg, bacon/pig. OK, maybe it doesn’t hold true in all things, but most things are either the cause of something, or the result of something.
I suppose a rock laying on a river bottom is neither, but most things in life, and most people in our lives are either the cause or the effect in terms of their relationship to us in one way or another.
I don’t think it matters so much what kind of pressure it is, but it seems important to recognize that pressure – like the bulging weak wall of a hose, or a leaky one, impacts us. And not so much that there is pressure, but when we have a change in pressure. We all live with some – financial constraints, requirements of our jobs, commitments to customers, colleagues, partners/spouses, parents, and children. We owe them all their due attention – some more, some less, some more often, some less, some are all the freaking time pressures.
I think the better question is not one of how someone deals with pressure, but rather how they deal with changes in pressure, and we should study the long-slow changes as carefully as the sudden ones.
Someone commented – a long time ago, it was early days of my working life, about how I coped with working on commission in what I did and how they could never handle the stress and uncertainty of not knowing about their income. I remember speaking in a dismissive tone to someone who didn’t want their performance to write their paycheck. Of course, I’ve softened my view, but I still eat what I kill – and determine my own income; I live by my wits, by my performance, by my service to clients, and once in a while – though rarely – I get lucky.
I don’t feel the pressure that person would have, but I feel a kind of pressure – sometimes a long slow increment, sometimes a sharp euphoric correction in the other direction. There is always pressure, but most people in my world call it drive. It starts with a D. So does desperation.
But I cannot imagine living in neutral, knowing everything is average, specific, routine, and simple – I don’t think I could bear it …
Reader feedback:
Hi Mark. I remember only too well the evolution of the digital leash. At the end of the 80’s places without cellphone service became fewer and farther between and our colleagues and partners could reach out and touch us at any time, day or night. Respect for others personal time evaporated like snow during a Chinook. Rather than being able to focus on the task at hand our monkey impulse to please triggered us to respond right away. We were being conditioned, just like one of Pavlovs dogs. The solution? Switch the paradigm and use the same tools to condition or train our clients. Turn on do not disturb, set up the out of office message to advise messages are not being monitored until a specific time, and will be returned in order of receipt. Or something to that effect. It worked. The conditioning training works both ways, DM, Okotoks, AB / from Mexico
You obviously never worked as a lawyer in private practice!!!, AN, Calgary, AB
Tread carefully with touchy subjects the perception might cost you a friendship, AG, Cancun, Mex.
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