Category: attitude

Doing It For Others Or For Yourself?

by EvieBurke, posted in attitude, Being Happy

I started writing this post about how frustrating it can be to do things for others and not be appreciated for it – when the reality is you’re doing it for yourself and justifying the time spent by saying it’s for someone else (when I do this it’s because I’m listening to the voice in my head that tells me it’s OK to spend time doing things for other people, but not for myself).

I remembered hearing a conversation about it, but couldn’t place where the conversation took place. Then I remembered! It wasn’t a conversation at all but two blog posts by the wonderful Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. So, instead of re-hashing her posts, I’m sending you over there (to the source!) to read them. It includes some other great pieces of information too! It’s all in her posts: Why I Try Not To Do Things For Others, But Instead, Do Them For Myself and 5 Mistakes I Continue To Make in My Marriage.

Let me know what things you do for others that are really for yourself in the comments!

 

What She Did Right

by EvieBurke, posted in attitude, Complaining, Happiness

I was talking with someone going through a difficult time at work recently, let’s call her Jane. Jane explained how unhappy she was at work and talked about the long hours she was putting in. She also shared that she was taking this as an opportunity to learn about herself. She said she found strengths she previously didn’t know she had and is learning how important boundaries are. She shared this information as the ground work for figuring out what she can do so she doesn’t feel completely drained at the end of the day.

Jane did a lot right with this situation. Here are four things that I observed:

She didn’t blame anyone.

Jane could have very easily blamed her long hours and unhappiness on her co-workers or boss or even herself, but she didn’t. She knew that her situation wasn’t specifically one person’s fault. It was the result of a lot of different things.

When things aren’t going well at work it can be easy to place the blame on a boss or co-worker. I know a common thought I had when things weren’t going well at work was along the lines of “well if so-and-so had just done x then I wouldn’t be having problem y.” I would forget that so-and-so had their own set of responsibilities and work to deal with and my top priorities were not necessarily their top priorities. And, generally, so-and-so doing x wasn’t really a reasonable request (because of their job or personality).

Sometimes the person hardest on you is you. While it’s important to take responsibility for your actions, beating yourself up about a situation isn’t helpful. And usually there isn’t one specific action that’s responsible for being frustrated or unhappy with work.

She didn’t complain about her situation, she shared where she was, then moved on to what she wanted from the conversation.

The energy of complaining is different than that of sharing. Jane shared enough of the situation help me understand what was going on and then moved on to what she wanted from the conversation. She didn’t dwell on what wasn’t working or her unhappiness. She was focused on moving past those things.

Sometimes when things aren’t going well all you want to do is complain about what’s going on, because you think that will make you feel better. Complaining won’t make you feel better, you’re going to have the same problems you had before and you just might make yourself more frustrated with the situation by complaining. If you’re looking for help on the issue and need to share your complaint to give the full picture, great! Just don’t spend all your time there – focus on moving forward.

She selectively shared her situation with others.

Jane had a couple of ideas about what she could do about her situation and also valued others thoughts, but was selective about who she shared it with. She didn’t share with people who would want to focus on how frustrating it was. Instead she shared with people she knew she could trust, would understand her situation, ask important questions and explore her options with her.

When you find yourself in a frustrating situation talk to your friends, mentor or coach who won’t focus on what’s going wrong, but on how to make more go right. It was clear at the end of our conversation that Jane was feeling a lot better about her situation. While if she had found people to complain with, she would have left more frustrated than when she started.

She looked for and found lessons in her situation

Jane recognized that even though she wasn’t thrilled with her situation she could learn from it. Sometimes when we’re going through a difficult time, we forget to look for the lessons we can learn from it. Jane saw the silver lining in her difficulties: she’s learning to set boundaries and saying no more often, both things she’s had problems with in the past.

What do you do when you are frustrated or unhappy with a recurring situation (like work)?

Photo credit: Implicit Smile by janoma.cl via flickr

Do I Have A Bad Day If You Do?

by EvieBurke, posted in attitude

I watched a YouTube video earlier today about a guy who was riding his bicycle and got called a name by a guy in a passing truck. He talked about how he immediately wondered what he was doing wrong that caused this. Did he act wrong, was he dressed wrong? What was it he did wrong?

Have you ever had a similar experience? Someone says something unkind and you wonder what you did wrong to cause that reaction. I think that’s a fairly normal response. Put your hand on the stove and it’s going to get burned, cut a guy off in traffic and you might see with a few interesting gestures made in your direction, cause and effect right?

Back to the video, he wondered what he did wrong for a while before realizing: He didn’t do anything wrong. Whatever caused the guy in the truck to call him a name had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the guy in the truck.

We often forget that just as we see the world through our own experiences, everyone else sees the world through their own, different set of experiences. Someone calls you a name from their truck, and we automatically review ourselves at that moment to find out what we were doing wrong. We only have that brief interaction and our own actions to review, and we forget that the person in the truck, who’s being rude, is perhaps living their life by completely different rules and had a completely different day.

Or at work, we make a small mistake and find ourselves in the boss’s office being reprimanded for how we handled it. We don’t understand why this small mistake warrants such a severe response. Maybe we get upset or maybe we quickly brush it off. Either way, we forget that the boss is looking at it through a different set of experiences.

As you go through your day, remember that everyone is making the best decisions they can, based on what their experiences have taught them.

Unfortunately, some people’s experiences have taught them that when they are feeling bad, they feel better if they share that bad feeling with others and that it’s perfectly okay to do that (for the record, it’s not).

So, how do we handle it if we end up on the receiving end?

  1. Realize that it’s not really about you. It’s about the other person and brush it off.
  2. If you can’t brush it off, get help in whatever form you need it.

What do you do when you’re on the receiving end of someone’s bad day?

If you’re interested, you can watch the video here.

Here’s Why It’s Not My Fault

by EvieBurke, posted in attitude, Responsibility
This is the third and last post in this series. The first can be found here and the second here.

There was a time of my life when I absolutely dreaded being called into someone’s office, because it generally meant one of three things:

  1. I was going to be given more work to do (I already had too much to do and not enough time to do it).
  2. I was going to sit through a meeting that wasn’t going to do anything for me other than take time away from my other tasks.
  3. I was going to be “yelled at” for something falling through the cracks because I was working on other higher priority issues and now this thing was the high priority.

No option was something I wanted to spend my time on.

This is the last of three posts where I’ll go through one option and review how I reacted and an alternate that might have made me (and the people around me happier).

3. I was going to be “yelled at” for something falling through the cracks because I was working on other higher priority issues and now this thing was the high priority.

How I reacted:
I was immediately on the defensive. Explaining why it had fallen through the cracks: I had lots of other high priority, fix it now issues that I was looking at. Oh, and the client didn’t express that this was an important issue when I was reviewing their other high priority issues with them. Basically, I was saying that it’s not my fault and these are the reason why.

An alternate:
First, I want to take a look at the start of the sentence: “I was going to be ‘yelled at.'” Actually, it was rare for me to walk into an office and hear a raised voice in my direction. The times I do remember raised voices were generally after I explained why something wasn’t my fault and took no responsibility for a problem I helped create.

I very rarely accepted responsibility for something falling through the cracks. It pains me to say that now (I’d rather not admit it and avoided writing this post so I wouldn’t have to revisit it). Responsibility and honesty are two important values for me. I wasn’t honest with myself about what was happening and thus avoided taking responsibility for some messes I caused or contributed to.

At the time I didn’t realize that part of the problem was that I wasn’t taking responsibility for my role in things. I felt I was doing the best I could with each situation and I wanted to avoid being “in trouble” as much as possible. “Yelled at” was another way I worded being “in trouble.”

Making a mistake and thus being “in trouble” meant I had done something bad and I would beat myself up over it. At some point I realized that making mistakes is just something that people do unintentionally. It’s not good or bad, it just is. And instead of beating myself up over it I can look at what actions led up to the mistake and what I can do differently in the future.

When I was able to reframe making mistakes, I was also able to take more responsibility for my actions (or inactions) and the results. One side effects of taking responsibility for my part in problems was it was easier to describe what the problems were. My focus had shifted away from making sure I wasn’t going to get “in trouble” to solving the problem.

So, while I wasn’t taking responsibility for things I should have been, the real issue was that I didn’t want to be “in trouble.” Have you ever had a similar experience?