Do You Live With Ease, or With Urgency?

Years ago, when I was first learning lovingkindness meditation, I had a problem with it.

These phrases are typically repeated as part of the meditation:

1. May all beings be safe
2. May all beings be healthy
3. May all beings be happy
4. May all beings live with ease

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You repeat these phrases first for yourself, then someone close to you, then someone not so close, then someone you find difficult. Then you get to the part about all beings. The repetitions may feel a little silly, but it does seem to help cultivate a more generous attitude.

It was the fourth line I had trouble with. It seemed to me that a life of ease would lead to weakness and doom any chance at fulfillment. It seemed to me that it’s our struggles that give life meaning and build resilience. A life of ease wouldn’t cultivate that.

Or so I thought.

So I would substitute, “May all beings be filled with meaning and compassion.”

Since becoming aware of certain proclivities on my part I’ve learned to lighten up.

I’ve also learned that this is not about whether our lives are easy. It’s about whether we respond to the difficulties we inevitably encounter with urgency or with ease.

The Imagined Integrity of Urgency

But I’m not the only one who’s been suspicious of living with ease. Many people with obsessive-compulsive personality traits feel that living with ease is caving in to a self-indulgent approach to life.

I’ve had many clients tell me that when life feels too easy, they feel something must be wrong. There must be some problem, some emergency that needs fixing.  They feel that they’re supposed to be leaning forward with urgency and impatience to get things done, and get them done right.

Even the OCP types that tend to obsess, think, and plan feel urgency, even if they habitually procrastinate.

Whether you lean toward compulsing or obsessing, living with urgency may feel like the more virtuous approach to life. It seems like the right thing to do.

Urgency is appropriate at times. It would be the appropriate response to the climate crisis. But living with a constant and habitual sense of urgency is the opposite of living with ease. When we live with ease we don’t feel pressure to rush or fix or control.

The Costs of Urgency

The intense urgency that many people bring to their tasks can interfere with relationships, well-being, and even getting things done.

Urgency causes problems in relationships because the compulsive partner feels that the house has to be cleaned NOW, but the non-compulsive partner doesn’t see the rush. Urgency becomes the moral high ground which makes it hard to negotiate a compromise.

Urgency diminishes well-being by creating a chronic state of tension that increases stress hormones. You might as well mainline poison.

And urgency creates pressure that sometimes makes concentration and completion more difficult.

The Underlying Anxiety That Propels Urgency

People who are compulsive have a natural desire to build, fix, clean, bring order or complete. These are all manifestations of an instinct to master problems–which can be productive and fulfilling.

But if you feel insecure about your your value, identity, or relationships, you may begin fixing things to try to reduce that insecurity. The natural desire to fix things gets hijacked, and projects begin to feel urgent because it seems they’re necessary to reduce anxiety.

In the back of your mind, you imagine that getting things done proves that you’re okay after all. Fixing (or finishing or cleaning, etc.) then becomes a life strategy to avoid anxiety rather than a way to express passions and find fulfillment.

Urgency is effective when there is imminent danger, true deadlines, or something you feel really passionate about that you want to complete. But it’s destructive as a habitual way of living.

And it often does become a deeply engrained habit. Live urgently for a while and you’ll lay down enough neural pathways that you’ll begin to feel constantly rushed. The original reasons for being urgent are long gone. The accelerator is just wired to the floor.

Live with Ease and Productivity

But please don’t get anxious about this. To live with more ease you don’t have to drop your desire to conquer everything that’s out of order in the universe.

You just need to remove the urgent need to do it.

To live with ease is to live without unnecessary strain, without working harder than you need to.

I can hold a pen with strain or I can hold it with ease. Holding it with ease I can write, well, easily. Try it yourself right now. Grab a pen or pencil. Hold it with a fist like you’re about to stab an ice block with an ice pick, but instead try to write that way. Now, relax your grip and hold it the way you usually would, between the pads of your thumb and forefinger. Isn’t that grip easier to write with? Yet all too often we use a death grip when a relaxed grip will do just fine. 

Being productive is not contrary to living with ease. Being urgent about productivity, or cleaning, or fixing, or planning is what gets in the way of living with ease.

Living with ease calls for a mindset that life does not have to be difficult. Not to deny or diminish our struggles, but it is usually our attitude toward them which raises our urgency.

Reality Check?

But isn’t this unrealistic? Life is difficult and stressful. How can you live with ease given the realities?

Of course this is a huge question, one which I won’t try to answer completely in this post. But I do want to make two main points about it:

1. We need to turn the question around. Since life is so difficult, why would you make it harder than it needs to be?

2. Most of the things that we fear never come to past. And most of the ones that do come to pass are manageable, if not an opportunity for growth. 

Healthy Productivity

Here are a few ideas to help you take the habitual urgency out of productivity:

• Be urgent about lowering urgency. Turn things around by using urgency to stop rushing now. Take back the healthy capacity to be mindful of time, and start living with ease now. Pause as you are reading this. Notice and release any urgency.

• Monitor tension in your body.  Physical tension often signals that we’re bringing urgency and anxiety to our goals. I’ve learned to notice tightness in my shoulders as a sign that I’m getting caught in urgency. Dropping them helps to reduce urgency.

• Identify what motivates your urgency and separate it from natural desire to accomplish something. Is this particular urgency really necessary for survival or fulfillment? Or are you rationalizing rushing because you really want to lower your insecurity and anxiety by proving your value? Focus on what you want to accomplish rather than what your fears tell you you need to accomplish so quickly.

• Save urgency as a special gear for when you really need it. Allow yourself to experience your fears of not being urgent.

• Don’t take on too much work or too much responsibility.

• Practice releasing urgency.   Mindfulness, walking meditation, progressive muscle relaxation and related techniques can lower your baseline of arousal and raise your capacity for being in the present.

• Make living with ease a priority. Is living with ease really important to you, or just a passing inspiration? You may need to intentionally release unrealistic goals and defensive strategies. Yes, it is ironic that you will need to be intentional about this. And you can do it lightly.

May we all live with ease….And still be productive.

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Speaking of living with ease, some of you may be heading out on vacation. If so, you might find my Short Guide to Vacationing for Workaholics, Compulsives, and Type A’ s helpful.