When Work Is Working You: Part Two

Releasing, Reframing, and Reconnecting: Three Steps to a Healthier Work Life

Link to Part One

Lesson Two: From Blame to Claim

With making space and freeing up a bit of our mind and life comes a much needed sense of clarity – clarity that we will need as we move onto our second lesson. This second lesson is focused on transformation. And in every recipe for change, there is an essential component which is a healthy dose of self-honesty and accountability. And though this may seem harsh it actually is the kindest thing we can do for ourselves, in the long run, because this is what eventually empowers us to become the masters of our own mind and life.

We might have all experienced this one way or another, a moment, a point, when we choose to come clean and face the music. When we decide to own up, to take responsibility, and to grow. Maybe it was when you were younger with relationships, with your health, or with your finances. It is a hard thing to go through because it forces you to look at yourself – to really look at yourself – and question. It doesn’t feel good at first because no one wants to feel that there are things that they could do better. And so the trick is not to fear and to trust that there is growth on the other side. And no matter how old we are or how much of life we believe we’ve experienced, there is always room for breakthrough moments. They keep us on our toes, they keep us humble, and they keep us open to the lessons life has in store for us.

The Inner Workings

When you meet with someone who is leading a highly stressful life, maybe a friend or a family member, one of the first things they will do is tell you about all the things that are happening to them. They will unload in hopes that you validate their feelings of powerlessness. And though there’s nothing wrong with venting and seeking commiseration, as that is something everyone deserves to have, it is a comfortable place to be in. Because when you think that something is out of your control, you have an excuse that is outside of your own efforts and skills that you can blame. You create a comfortable could-have would-have prison in your mind at the high cost of letting others live your life for you.

By believing that we are powerless, we actively take away from our own power; because there is power in perception. In 2007, a psychological study was conducted by a Harvard professor, Ellen Langer, and her student, Alia J. Crum, where they examined the effects a person’s mind-set can have on their physical health while exercising. They monitored the health of hotel cleaning ladies and discovered that without changing anything and by just informing a group of them that cleaning hotel rooms constitutes working out, four weeks later, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index. Proving that you can do the same thing with a different mind-set and get completely different results. Proving that perception matters.

So when we take on a blaming mentality we are using perception against ourselves, like accepting defeat, we are giving our power away. But if we’re able to give things the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that we don’t have the full picture of the reasons people do what they do and why things happen the way they do, then we can focus on what we do have power over. If your boss is sending you texts and calling you late at night and on weekends, they may be at fault, yes, but how and when did that start? What was your role in how this began to happen? This mind-set of questioning is one that we can work with. Instead of continuing to villainize our boss, we can remove blame, be honest with ourselves, and begin to reframe our minds; by setting boundaries, transforming challenges into opportunities, and identifying when it is time to call it and to pivot.

• Boundaries: Boundaries take intention and practice to master. They may seem hard to set at first but the more we choose to practice having them, the easier it gets and the healthier we become. What’s more is that people understand and respect those who have boundaries, even if they don’t show it, or if they secretly wish you were easier to manipulate. Boundaries are how others are reminded of your own separate individuality.

• The Lessons in the Challenges: My work partner back in the day used to make fun of me for saying “well, that’s a great lesson” when things felt hard or seemed unfair. And though it may seem easier to have this attitude as a junior, years of accumulated challenges can make us jaded and inflexible. But the mentality of choosing to see growth in everything is one that can serve us our whole life, if we work on keeping it. In fact, the more challenging the person or the situation is, the more there is to learn; the harder the times the richer the lessons. So when someone is being difficult to work with, the opportunity here is to ask yourself what it is about this person that is affecting you. What does it mean about you? What is something that can be reframed into a positive about them, a characteristic or pattern that you can use? Like the hotel cleaning ladies from the perception study, once you lean into the benefit you are getting from the challenge you will grow from it.

• Knowing When to Pivot: Now there are situations and people that test you so much that they can lead you to a breaking point. It may seem dire when we’re in them but breaking points are natural and needed. They’re nature’s way of letting us know that something isn’t working. So when we’re in a project that we are seeing is headed to a breaking point, it is up to us to know when to call it and when to salvage the humans over the work. Because it is much harder to heal a broken person than it is to withstand a professional setback or failure. And when we are in the thralls of the sunk cost fallacy, we are controlled by the notion that we have already put so much into the work that we need to see it through, that we need to make up for our loss. But by having the clarity to know when something is about to break and to pivot, we take back the power. We choose to use the breaking point as a launching pad. It becomes our “failure” to grow from and to come back stronger from.

The Outer Workings

For this second lesson, the outer workings are ways that you can put your inner workings to the test by doing the things that empower you.?

Claim your time: If you are familiar with Parkinson’s law you will know that work has the tendency to expand to fill the allotted time for its completion. Which means that if you had three hours to assemble a closet that you could otherwise assemble in half an hour, that you will most likely use the three hours to assemble said closet. That means that if you have weekend work to do and you give yourself the weekend to complete the work, the work will probably expand to fill your two day weekend, leaving you feeling drained and frustrated. But if you plan out how much time you realistically want to give yourself to complete the assignment, and if you respect it and stick to it, you will not only save yourself a lot of time but you will also feel a lot more in command of it. You will start to know how long things take you to complete and your capacity for work will increase as you naturally begin to work more efficiently.

Claim your time off: Even if you are overworked, act like your time outside of work is yours by default. Just by making plans, you are giving yourself something to look forward to and you are immediately making your workload feel lighter. And when others see you taking time, they are also reminded of your own individual needs. Whether it’s week-day nights, weekends, or vacation plans, voicing these plans will be an important practice in creating healthy boundaries. Once you make your plans, remember to try and respect them and keep them. Because canceling dinner with your brother this one time may not seem like a big deal, but it crosses your boundaries and creates habits. Before you know it, one cancellation turns into a few cancellations that over time end up putting your work before your family. There may be times, however, when you decide that you want to cancel plans and that’s ok, maybe you feel invested in the project, or maybe you simply enjoy it. But when that happens of your own accord, you will be at peace with it because it will have been your choice to make that exception and to prioritize your work for now.?

Claim your inactivity: When done right, studies have shown that letting our minds wander can reduce stress and anxiety but can also enhance problem-solving abilities and creativity. However, what ends up happening is that we tend to resist it because inactivity has such a bad reputation in our society and culture. In doing so, we suppress a natural need and turn something that can be highly beneficial to our work and health into guilt and self-criticism. But when we don’t ignore it and learn how to use it, it can become a superpower. By setting consistent time into our calendar to think, daydream, meditate etc. we give ourselves permission to not expect anything from ourselves – but to enjoy our minds in a guilt-free and positive way.

Ultimately, taking our health under our own hands will not only make us happier and more empowered, but it will also make us a better worker. By feeling that we have more choice in when and how we work, by being able to have more of a life outside of work, by being able to take pleasure in the down times and to daydream in a guilt free way, we can begin to enjoy work a little more, to bring in lived experiences and more diverse thinking into our work, and to improve our problem-solving abilities and enhance creativity. All qualities in an employee that any company would be lucky to have.

The Mantra

I am the hero

of my story and I choose

how I want to move

Link to Part Three

References

1. Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and ... - pnas (no date). Available at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2011796118 (Accessed: April 28, 2023).