THAT'S MEN:You know what? It's tough being a guy
A FEW years ago I estimated, with a mixture of pride and ruefulness, that I had worked every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included, for three months.
This was partly due to being self-employed and partly due to being stupid about this whole issue of work: if I am doing that much work I must be a great guy, the real deal, a sort of Hercules figure. Why do I say that all this hard work was stupid for me and might be stupid for you, too?
A few months ago I got myself a Buddhist life coach called Sunada Takagi, whom I have mentioned before, who I thought would help me to do more in less time and be blissful about it.
Then one day during our weekly phone call, when I was enthusing about all sorts of marketing plans I had for all sorts of things, she suggested quietly that I figure out whether I wanted to do those things.
Oh. Once I let the question in I realised that, actually, I didn’t want to do most of those things. There is some sort of fantasy, dynamic guy with my name who wants to do them, but that guy isn’t actually me.
So I learned to do less rather than more. And the odd thing is that I still get the necessary things done but without all the hoopla, all the ridiculous busyness with which I had been filling my days.
The busyness had another purpose – namely justifying my existence on the planet – which actually had nothing to do with getting things done.
I am not alone in this. The International Labour Organisation estimates that about one in 12 workers puts in more than 12 hours a day to avoid facing up to personal issues.
In Spain, according to an article in the journal Psicothema, about one in eight workers are addicted to work. If they didn't work excessively, they would feel anxious or guilty. Some estimates suggest that in Japan the figure is about one in five. I'm not aware of a figure for Ireland, but the easygoing Irishman is a figure from the past, I fear, and we're certainly up there with the Spanish if not with the Japanese.
In the current economic climate I suspect that the pressure for excessive working is all the greater.
But I’m not suggesting that there’s something wrong with hard work or extra work. It’s when you work extra hours to avoid issues in your personal life, or because you think (as I did) that hard work somehow justifies you as a person, that you need to take a whole new look at your behaviour.
Some males in the animal kingdom put on a show to impress females. Male dolphins carry sticks and branches in their mouths and throw them towards the surface to impress Ms Dolphin. Male chameleons put on a colour display of red, green, yellow and blue to get the attention of female lizards who, apparently, turn green if they’re impressed.
The human male is no different. In a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science,male skateboarders were asked to perform difficult skateboarding tricks. Some performed their tricks in front of a male, others in front of an attractive female. You're ahead of me – the lads performing in front of the female took the biggest risks. What's more, their testosterone levels were elevated and high testosterone levels are linked with risky behaviour.
Could this mean beautiful women are indirectly responsible for the stupid, risky decisions that collapsed the financial system? Not really. It seems that success in the markets boost testosterone levels too, which leads to more risk-taking which, not long ago, led to more profits which led to more testosterone highs which led to . . . well, we know what it led to. So now all the financial geniuses are full of cortisol which makes people hide away from risk.
You know what? It’s tough being a guy.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas.
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