Stan was sharing how much energy one of his employees is costing him. It was an issue that had been disturbing him for a while. Asking him about the situation I heard a lot of reasons why that employee wasn’t doing his job. Stan was focusing on the employee’s behavior, explaining how disturbing that behavior was to Stan and others around him.

What Stan was trying to do, was to solve the problem at hand. The evident solution, to him, was that the employee had to change his behavior.

What Stan wasn’t considering at all, was how much energy he was investing in the situation. By focusing on the other person, he felt free to let go of noticing and regulating his own emotions.

What he wasn’t noticing, was that he was suppressing or resisting his own emotions which involved a lot of his energy. His emotions shifted his ability to know what he wants by focusing his thoughts on the things he wanted to prevent. However, as he was focusing his attention on the other, he wasn’t able to pay attention to himself and what his emotions were trying to tell him.

Knowing what his emotions were trying to tell him may not solve the problem with the employee, but that’s not the purpose of being aware of oneself. It is to be able to have the best possible resource management of one’s resources.

That a lot of problems disappear on the way is an additional benefit. It comes from the ability to prioritize one’s use of resources and thus to be able to choose one’s reactions to a stimulation.