How Buddha Would Fight Burnout
Give it 90 minutes
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Buddha’s very first formal sermon covered a set of principles that came to be known as the “Four Noble Truths.” The first, which gets an understandably bad rap, is usually translated as: “Life is suffering.”
It sounds pretty depressing, but Buddha didn’t mean it to be. He was merely trying to validate a feeling all of us have at one time or another. Life is difficult. Pain and loss are inevitable. But this doesn’t mean that life is only suffering. There are moments of joy and happiness, too. Most of us are not in constant agony.
Some scholars aren’t even sure suffering is exactly what Buddha meant. His teachings come to us in a few ancient Indian languages, including one called Pali, and the word used in that language is dukkha. One way to translate dukkha is “suffering” or even “pain.” But others have used the word stress instead. So another way to think about Buddha’s first truth might be: “Life is really stressful.”
For many of us, that’s the version that really rings true — especially when we’re working.
Study after study confirms that our working lives are full of stress. According to a report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 40% of U.S. workers find their jobs “very or extremely stressful.” As far back as 1996, surveys found that 75% of American workers were experiencing high levels of job stress at least once a week, and things have likely only gotten worse.
Work doesn’t have to make us miserable. And when we find ways to be happy at work, everyone benefits.
It’s not just Americans, either. A recent European study found that 27.5% of workers suffered from fatigue as a result of workplace stress. A survey of women working in Sweden found that 38% perceived their jobs as stressful. Sweden! If even the Swedes can’t chill out, we must be in real trouble.
All this stress has very real costs. Early estimates of the total societal costs of workplace stress back in the 1990s were as much as 10% of GNP. Today, in the United States, that would represent over $1 trillion. Worldwide, the International Labor Organization estimates the cost of workplace stress at 1%–3.5% of…
