Homeostasis

Recently I grew to think that keeping myself emotionally calm and steady state is the crucial factor of success in life. Here, by the word ‘success’ I do not mean to be limited to secular success like earning more money or being successful in the ladder of social hierarchy in the group I belong to. It is more about my emotional well-being or happiness. There have been some issues prevented me from living emotionally stable life. In sophisticated word, I had hard time because I could not maintain my emotional homeostasis under uncomfortable situations.

When I am disturbed and lose my emotional stability, usually the aftermath is not being able to focus on what I have been doing or what I have to do. Recently I had to drive back home in the midst of working hours from the work because of family issues during last couple of weeks. The reason why I had to do these was never comfortable to handle.

When I fail to handle my emotional disturbance, I start to fail to work properly. There is a positive feedback leading to the failure. As a first step, bad imaginations about potential layoff start to hound me. I am a new immigrant in the United States and what I heard about the job security in the US was mostly related to frequent layoffs based on employees’ competency. So when I have to head back home during work hours under emotionally agitated me, I imagine myself laid off because of my incompetency.

One more thing recently impairing my emotional steadiness is the conflict between my innate personality and the disposition desired at my workplace. I already have thought I am kind of a person with some level of natural reserve -which has deepened with the language barrier for now-, less suitable for my current job as a ‘consultant’. While I am working in my office, this thought interminably hounds me and made me unable to focus on my current works.

After struggling to handle all these discomforts, I started to listen Ven. Pomnyun’s sermon agarin. His sermons publicized in YouTube usually takes the form of “questions and answers”, where the questioners from the audience of the sermon are answered by Pomnyun regarding agonies in their everyday life. I used to watch his sermon a lot so I can almost know what his answer will be, upon listening what the question is. There are different lessons he deliver, but in many case they are one among “Be grateful to what you have” and “Be free from your greed”.

I have listened some of his sermons again and think now I got answers to the agonies I have had recently. For the first one, handling mental discomfort when I have to head back home due to family issue, now I think that I should be grateful to what I have now rather than torturing myself with imaginary fear about my job security. It is better to focus on what I can do in such situation rather than just be depressed and destroy myself, and being grateful to what I have -even including the family issues making me head back home- helps me get out of the circle of bad imaginations. Pomnyun sermons that you can always be grateful to everything you have -even including the roots of disturbances you encounter-. The key is to not attempt to remove or go against the disturbance, as it is impossible in most cases and the false hope of fixing it ignites your feeling of despair. It is silly to be overwhelmed with the illusion that you can control everything as what it only does is discouraging you (as you cannot control them), depriving you of the ability to focus on your present. It is better to do something can be done now as it will reduce your regret in the future at least.

For the second one, the conflict of my natural reserve and the disposition desired in my work, I have been exhausting myself thinking that what I am doing now is valueless. I was obsessed with the thought that I have to do the things I was told to be valuable at work -networking and socializing-. I am not attempting to say that those factors are meaningless. Although they are important, still I have works on my plate and they should not be devalued. Doing what I can do and moving on is far better than ruining what I could have done, devoured by fear. Pomnyun repeatedly sermons that “If you are not willing to do something, it is because you can still bear the aftermath of not doing that. So just let it be as you will see yourself doing that when you find the consequence is unbearable”. Seemingly it sounds sarcastic like “die if you want to” and triggers laughter, but after laughing I feel far better. The word helps alleviate my suffering and instills some hope that everything will finally be fine.

I also decided to write everything I feel and think on this blog as well. I have thought this blog should be oriented to delivering knowledge, which has kept me from uploading new posts in various topics. Keeping this blog updated with my personal feelings and thoughts will give me a vent to settle myself and stay calm in the occurrence of emotional disturbances. It will also sharpen my English writing skills. And it could make some money if some valuable posts accrue here. This blog will allow me a connection to the world, even after I get old, retired, and finally become worthless. It will never be a losing game.

There is a term called “homeostatic emotion”. For example, hunger is one of the homeostatic emotions, which triggers my behavior of eating, to compensate the adverse impact of fasting to my health. I hope that whenever I feel emotionally disturbed due to the conflict with others or the fear from unknown future, I could leverage my urge to keep this blog updated so that I can continuously write something about myself and thereby promote my emotional and mental wellness😊.