The lack of candor and openness in most workplaces is one of the main demotivators for employees.
If you work at a place where everybody agrees during a meeting, but then implementing what was decided is a lengthy and painful process, that’s probably because people don’t feel like they are free to speak up or because they don’t want to. One way or the other, the environment gets quickly very toxic, frustration mounts, and what’s left is an ocean of indifference and inefficiency.
Putting somebody on a pedestal is a bad thing for you and for them.
For you, because you are taking distance from an ideal that you should, instead, make your own. You say things like: I’ll never be like you; You are much better than I am; I could never do that. And by saying it, you both set a lower bar for yourself and build a perfect excuse for your next failure.
For them, because you are holding them to an unrealistic standard. It might be that they have found some specific ways to manage the situation, but for sure they battle with the same demons, have the same uncertainty, feel the same fear of failure as you do. They need to be able to express all that, instead of hiding it to adhere to the idea you might have.
At some point, you have to let go.
Not of things, but of your attitude towards things. Most of what happens is made worst by what we think about it, what we feel about it, what we say about it – to ourselves and to others. That’s what we need to get rid of, the part we have to let go.
Do it sooner rather than later, and you can start the process of change.
Most things last between a few seconds and a few minutes.
Then, we make them linger in the form of thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, preoccupations, so they become a central part of our life and drive our behavior.
Next time you feel angry, bored, worried, nervous, awkward, disappointed, try and sit with it without doing nothing. Nothing at all.
You’ll be surprised by how quickly that goes away.
Onto the next one.
When the sky is cloudy, is the sun still there?
That’s a powerful lesson by Daniel Sá Nogueira, coach and trainer.
That is to say, when you have problems and life seems grim, can you still be happy? Problems are problems, and happiness is happiness. They are separate things, and we should try to not mix them. And when we succeed, we will find ourselves pondering our problems while being, at the same time, happy.
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