Embrace reality & deal with it
Tarek Bayaa
CCO & Co-founder - making a world class employee experience accessible to every company
I couldn't have come across this principle from Ray Dalio at a better time two weeks ago. Coming back from vacation, it just felt like one challenge after another were being thrown my way. Although in the grand scheme of our mission, most of these obstacles were irrelevant, it was the sheer volume that was starting to impact me negatively.
I used to find that bad news created a sense of "anxiety" layered on top of "fear" with a pinch of "stress" sprinkled all over. Those emotions would sit in the back of my psyche and slowly become all encompassing. They would affect my sleep, my ability to be present in interactions and erase my problem solving capability.
In the midst of COVID, I realized that I had made a decision to allow negative emotions associated with work life to live within my mind (i.e. stress, anger, fear, anxiety, a "blaming external circumstances" mindset). What most people fail to realize is that we own our reaction to ANY circumstance. When we become stressed, we are CHOOSING to be stressed (the lack of intention to feel any other way is in and of itself a decision).
"Embrace reality and deal with it."
领英推荐
Dalio's quote was a needed reminder to replace stress and anxiety with curiosity and resilience. By facing reality across each of those obstacles, I was able to ask "why did this happen" or "what can we learn from this." Replacing those negative emotions with a mindset that every obstacle is a path to improvement is more productive. It allowed our team to focus on areas that will continue to make a world class employee experience possible for our team and the broader GCC market.
Obstacles are a path to learning. Negative emotions and thoughts are unproductive. Embrace reality and deal with it!
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Owning and/or running a business is hard. Then again, most things in life worth pursuing are hard. I've always found peace & comfort in reflection through writing. In 2021, I started sharing my "mental notes to self" publicly based on my learnings from working with the amazing people at Bayzat. The aim is to help current and aspiring leaders navigate the good & bad times.
Group Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist - Executive Recruitment @Saudi German Group, specializing in UAE & GCC recruitment
3 年Practicing mindfulness and being in the present moment can be a game-changer in combating those stubborn negative emotions. A profound lesson I learnt from Ekhart Tole’s Power of Now is that if we reduce the present moment to 'a means to an end', the “now” will never be good enough.
Empowering the Largest Industrial Companies on the Planet to Innovate.
3 年This is amazing Tarek Badra. Way to go!
Project Manager at TikTok
3 年Great piece T
Associate at PwC
3 年Journaling is probably one of the best solutions I’ve found in dealing with negative emotions