happiness – Workplace Resilience

Get Somewhat Happy

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said that they’re “depressed”, I’d be rich by now. You see, being a Mental Health therapist, it’s hard to ignore someone that says that to you. I take it seriously— very seriously. Hearing that word compels me to ask a myriad of questions to get to the heart of the situation. Hearing that word puts me on high alert to closely evaluate the true meaning of their statement.

In today’s world, “I’m depressed” can take on a whole different meaning. Often, they’re trying to say, “I’m sad”, or “I’m very unhappy”. That’s vastly different from “I’m depressed”. Feeling sad is a pretty normal emotion over a lifetime. It’s a given that people will experience situations that will make them sad. However, for many people, the minute that they feel a negative, uncomfortable emotion, they don’t quite know what to do with it. It seems as if having any tolerance for uncomfortable emotions has been drastically reduced for many of us. Our ability to ride the waves— a sign of resilience, has diminished.

Our culture is filled with messages that tell us that life’s expectation is to be blissfully happy. We should strive to find happiness in our careers, our relationships and beyond. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Personally, I want to be happy too. However, I realize that life is filled with normal ups and downs. Not every minute of your life is going to be filled with the good stuff. This belief has become deeply ingrained in our culture, which leaves many of us to feel that we’re losing out on the good life.

The truth is that feeling sad, angry, and hurt does serve a purpose. In fact, it can be very good for you.

Negative emotions spur us on to change our lives. They give us the strength and push to go after that new position we want in our career, or finally take that leap in our business. It’s the impetus for us to sever a bad relationship or finally move out on our own. It protects us from staying in dangerous situations where we can be hurt. It encourages us to have that “aha!” moment in our careers.

The truth is that we need our negative emotions to help us become the best version of ourselves.

Instead of trying to numb our feelings when we’re down or sad, maybe we should search within to discover how we can grow from the experience. Ask yourself this question:

What is my sadness and pain trying to tell me? What do I need to change?

I believe each one of us needs to reset our “happiness meter” a bit. We should consider that being content is a good goal as we ride the waves of life. Emotions are the barometer that helps us gauge what CHANGES we need to make in our life. Learn to walk through your sad feelings and you’ll find that you like what’s waiting on the other side.

Attitude

I had just taken my seat at the IMAX theatre to see the movie. My friend was visiting from out of town and we decided that this was the perfect thing to do on a cold day. Apparently, so did everyone else in our city— the place was packed and as the people piled in, it became obvious that we were going to run out of seats.

Eventually, one of the employees asked if everyone could move to the middle so they could make room for the people still being seated. Quickly, my friend and I stood up and moved one more seat to my left. We sat down and continued to enjoy our time talking. Suddenly, we overheard the women to my friend’s right begin to complain.

“That isn’t fair— why do we need to move when we got here early and they didn’t?” My friend and I heard this and smiled at each other. Five minutes later, she went on. “Why should I be punished for getting to the theatre on time? I shouldn’t have to move and be made uncomfortable!” I whispered to my friend that some people are never happy and she smiled back.

I finally took a good look at the woman who could only view her world half-empty. The reality was that moving over one seat actually improved her visual experience. She truly had a better seat now. However, she couldn’t see that. She couldn’t see anything but misery.

People can focus on the smallest things in life and become unhappy. However, when they take these attitudes to work with them, it becomes everyone’s problem.

Steffanie Wilk, an associate professor at Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University, studied employee mood and it’s impact on job performance. In the study, she asked telephone customer service representatives from a Fortune 500 company to record their moods during various times of the day over a three week period. They took into account the impact of individual temperament and the moods of their customers. The results proved that when beginning their day, the employee’s mood influenced their mood for the rest of the shift.

It should be no surprise to hear that employees that were happy at the beginning of the day generally stayed that way throughout their day. They responded more positively to their interactions with customers, which resulted in better customer service. Those that came to work miserable tended to continue to feel worse as the day wore on. The important point to glean from this study is that these negative mood shifts resulted in more than a 10% decline in employee productivity.

If you do the math, you can see the implications for revenue loss for any organization. Companies, big or small, can’t afford to have chronic negative employees on their team. Now imagine what happens when the negative employee spreads their bad attitude to the people around them. It’s like an infectious disease that can destroy the culture, productivity and in turn, the profitability of any organization.

Now, back to my miserable friend at the movie theatre. Hopefully, she will change her ways. Maybe it was a one-time thing and I just hit her on the wrong day. But in all probability, she goes to work somewhere every day with this same perspective on life and infects her co-workers with this attitude.

I hope that’s not the case.

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Embracing Failures

My son requested a homemade birthday cake for his celebration this year. He wanted his special treat to be a yellow cake with chocolate frosting made by me. This request might not be a difficult one to most people— but to me, it was huge. I don’t enjoy baking. Frankly, it’s hard for me to understand why I should spend time baking a cake when I could be doing so many other interesting things.

It really isn’t that hard to follow a recipe on a box of cake mix. In spite of this, I managed to mix all the ingredients without including the needed water. This dawned on me when I went to pour the batter into the pans and the batter wouldn’t budge. Apparently, water is an essential ingredient in this recipe. I put the batter back in the bowl and added the water.

Thirty minutes later, I took a look in the oven and decided that the golden-brown cake layers were ready to take out and cool. I left to do a quick errand and figured I would ice the cake upon my return. With the cake cooled, I turned the pan over to release it. Nothing happened. I ran a knife around the edge and hit the bottom of the pan— still nothing happened. I tried the other pan with the same results. After much work, the cake came out in pieces.

Refusing to feel discouraged, I began to problem solve. Being my optimistic self, I decided to piece it back together with the frosting. My brilliant solution didn’t work. That’s just about the time when my husband walked in and stared at my masterpiece. I could tell it was hard for him to keep a straight face.

Now, if you’re wondering if it was as bad as I’m making it out to be, take a look at the included picture of my cake. It was truly, truly bad and my attempt to bake this birthday cake was an epic fail.

I should be good at this type of thing. I should be able to bake a cake for my son. I should be talented enough to follow an easy box cake recipe. All of the “shoulds” flowed through my mind as I stared at my cake. All the “shoulds” just made me feel worse about the situation.

Like you, I enjoy succeeding in life. I have high expectations and I work daily to develop my talents. This experience didn’t fit in with my view of self. This experience made me feel really bad. I searched for the reason that I failed so miserably.

And then, I began to think about the situation objectively. It’s hard to go through life without failing miserably now and then. Bad things will happen— much bigger things than my disastrous cake. Eventually, it will happen in your career, your relationships and every facet of your life, no matter how hard you work. You will give your best effort and still, things will not turn out as you expected. It will be disappointing and disheartening, but where you go from there is what truly matters.

Letting go of the “shoulds” and allowing your self the freedom to mess up now and then is key. Keeping your eye on the horizon instead of over your shoulder is also important.

Accept that the experience of failure is just another part of your life journey. The ability to be resilient and move on after failure is what truly matters.

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Technology Overload

When I get into bed at night, I attempt to review my day. Did I have a good day? Have I been productive? Are there any positive changes that I need to make? This past Monday, I took a good honest look at my last 24 hours. The truth was that it was a day full of distractions. I struggled to focus and I accomplished very little. As I searched for the reason, I pushed myself to be honest with my behavior. The answer came to me…

I was addicted to my smartphone and it was getting in the way of my success.

I decided at that moment that I was going to make some changes. I suppose being licensed as a Mental Health Therapist has its advantages. I outlined a plan for the next day. I would check my email and all Social Media ONLY four times during the day. I would count each time that I had the mental urge to look on my phone or search on my computer. Each time that I would have this urge, I would tell myself to “let it go” and focus on my current activity.

I really didn’t expect this goal to be so difficult for me. I’m shocked to tell you that the first day was much harder than I ever imagined— I counted 46 times. Just think about that. 46 times, my brain signaled me to connect on Social Media. 46 times, my brain ran this loop and instructed me to pick up the phone.

No wonder I was having so much trouble focusing and accomplishing my goals! My brain had learned to be rewarded with the “ding” of an email and the excitement of a like or response from social media. My brain wanted more and more of that same reward.

In a study by the Associated Press, the average attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds. When you spend enough time on the Internet, the neural pathways in your brain change. You can become rewarded, not for staying on your task, but instead jumping to a more exciting thing. In other words, you can quickly rewire your brain.

It has been demonstrated over and over that your brain cannot effectively or efficiently switch between tasks. In the long run, multi-tasking causes you to accomplish less and run the risk of making multiple mistakes. On top of that, you have a much lower rate of retention.

If you’re looking at your phone 46 times in one day, it’s safe to say that you have formed a habit. Everyone knows that habits are hard to break since there is a payoff for continuing the behavior. In the short term, my behavior made me feel good. However, I knew that this unhealthy habit had to go.

Having awareness and recognizing that you have an issue is the first step to solving a problem. The interesting thing is that the first day I monitored my use and attempted to stop my behavior, I felt so much calmer, was able to focus and was definitely more productive.

I would be lost without my technology so I’m certainly not an advocate to disconnect. However, as with all things in life, moderation is key.

So I have a challenge for you. Take one day and limit your phone and social media use. Write down how many times that you get the urge to connect, and monitor how your overall productivity and how you’re feeling. Let me know how you do.

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Accountability

I still remember going to my older son’s 3^rd grade school conference. The teacher loved him and shared many wonderful stories. She relayed that he was smart, kind and had a great personality. Then she asked about a paper that he had recently brought home.

“I suppose you saw the math paper where he received a D. He was very upset about the grade and worried about what you would think of it.” I gave her a confused look and asked her when he brought it home. Apparently, it was supposed to come home in his backpack— it was 5 days later and I had never seen it. She chuckled and asked me not to come down too hard on him. Obviously, the paper had disappeared somewhere between school and home.

When I got home, I went upstairs to his room and sat down on his bed to have the talk. I told him how much his teacher raved about him and ended the story with the mystery of the missing “D” paper. I saw the look in his eyes and just waited for the explanation.

After much discussion, it was revealed that he had gotten off the bus and proceeded to take the paper and put it down the sewer drain. I’m imagining that the scenario was conjured up on the bus ride home. I suppose for a 3^rd grader that was a logical way to solve the problem.

Now, I’m happy to report that my son, who’s now an adult, has learned to handle mistakes and missteps in a more responsible manner. However, in your travels through life, I’m pretty certain that you have come across a number of individuals that refuse to take accountability for their actions— they’re still throwing their “D” papers down the sewer drain. Their excuses and justifications for their actions can be downright exhausting.

Copping out on responsibility can become a habit and theme in every facet of your life. It inhibits your ability to move ahead in your career and find happiness and success in your personal life. Stop and think about someone that makes this behavior part of their daily routine. After awhile, the excuses just roll off their tongue and the more practice they get, the more proficient they become at this skill. In time, they truly believe their own explanations.

Right now, some of you are thinking that this does not describe you— but hold on a minute. Maybe you’re not a serial storyteller. However, there are times when each one of us is guilty of rationalizing our situation in order to feel better.

Take a step back and be honest. Maybe you didn’t get that sale today because the buyer was simply in a bad mood. You lost out on the promotion last week to the other employee because he always “sucks up” to the boss. You didn’t lose your goal of 5 lbs. this week because you just retain too much water. Never mind that you didn’t close the sale or you didn’t possess managerial skills or you ate more than you really should have on your diet.

We are ALL guilty of not taking accountability at some point.

The thing to remember is that your outcomes directly reflect your actions. Your success in life is in direct relation to your ability to be painfully honest with YOU. Do you make things happen or do things happen to you? A big part of your resilience in life is tied up in your skill of taking accountability for your actions. It’s realizing that you control your own destiny: your happiness and success is dependent upon you.

The next time you struggle with reaching a goal daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, step back and give this some thought: take responsibility for your place in life.

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