3. The Work is more important than our ideas about the work

“I can’t do this. I’m gonna sound stupid. I wish I had a sandwich. If I had a sandwich this would be better. I have nothing to say. A ham sandwich would be good. I should be vegetarian. Ok, buckle down. How to begin, how to begin… Oh look it’s the cat.” These are examples of things that may or may not have just run through my head as I considered writing on the third principle of work, “The work is more important than our ideas about the work.” She’s a beauty, this one, because she just comes out and says it. This principle says “Stop.” and puts the mind in it’s place. 

Plainly, it states that the work one does, and is charged with doing, is of greater importance than what he or she might think of it. It does not discriminate. If you think your job is essential to the continuing of the human race, the most important job ever, we couldn’t possibly survive without it… Or if you believe your work to be menial, inconsequential, small and of little impact, the principle applies. The work is more important than our ideas about the work. The work is our time, our focused attention, our precious and finite energy.

To use myself as an example, I am carrying a message in mind. It’s unconscious but resulting in behavior. The message is “Finishing this will be difficult, or is difficult” Finishing what, this post? Why difficult? Where’d I learn that? And how has my behavior communicated that? 

Last I wrote here it was October 1. Since then I have thought about this regularly. I have worked and nearly completed my application for certification by the IBRT, taken on new clients, worked on different projects, there were the holidays… I didn’t make it here. So why has it been over two months? Well, my ideas took over. A fear, a false knowing, crept into my mind and made itself a nest. I let what I thought it could or should be interfere with the doing of it and the result is time I’ll never get back. More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. All this over a blog post. 

My work is more important than my ideas about it. This principle follows the first two:

1. Prepare the working surface.
2. Trust the instruments to do the job.

There is a fourth and final principle forthcoming. In context, the third principle is where the work takes place, the doing, the action and the creation. The principles state that all necessary preparations have been made and finally, the mind can settle into a relaxed state of focused attention, it’s ideas placed aside. 

Rumi, the Persian poet, says “The mind is a wonderful tool and a terrible master.” The same is true of ideas.The wrong ideas can take on terrible power, instruct and lead. We’ve seen this through out history in governments and businesses. People who are very confident aren’t hurt by criticism. They make use of it, whether it comes from themselves or others. They make use of the ideas hidden inside the criticism and it pushes their work forward.   

The president made a commencement speech, I think in Ohio, and talked about how a body of work is never complete. It is always expanding. If you know your work and are deep in the doing of it, you are blessed. If not, perhaps your ideas are too important, perhaps there’s fear. Fear robs the mind of it’s ability to act and reason. Courage is the most crucial of the virtues, without it the others can’t be regularly practiced. And a man’s work, says Camus, is a slow trek to rediscover those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. What I’m saying is fear is fought with courage, work is a thing of joy and all these ideas don’t matter. More accurately, they’re as important as we think they are. We see what we know. 

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