All that Glitters Will Never Be Completely Gone ✨
Because It’s Literally In Every Crevice of Your Life
Eighteen years ago, I had two young kids and needed a part-time job.
I was thrilled when what seemed like the ideal opportunity appeared via a friend, working for the owner of a small business (said friend’s husband) whose office was conveniently located less than five miles from our home and our kids’ school.
It was perfect except when it wasn’t.
This is where I learned that no matter how good I am at a job, it doesn’t change the personality of a boss who can be a demotivating bully. (Is there any other kind? 🤔)
At first I thought it was just me. I must not be doing a good job. Then I had a conversation with the person who’d worked there the longest, and he assured me it was not me. “As long as you can accept that any decision you make will be wrong, you’ll do fine here,” he told me.
Wow. That was no consolation whatsoever and I was disheartened.
I didn’t want to leave because the job was what I wanted and needed at the time. So I focused on my “why” — the flexibility it allowed me for my kids — and told myself it wasn’t so bad. More on this later.
Fast forward 18 years, my kids are grown and I’m still there. Happily, that particular bully boss is not. I’ve gained more responsibility and respect in the years since he retired. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still carry the scars of my experience with him.
And as I head into the last week of the “self-management” section of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, (I can’t express how happy I am about that.), I realize how it’s all related. Here are a couple of the strategies the EI Appraisal suggests and my thoughts on them.
“Stay Synchronized: Keep your mind and body in sync with the situation. When you feel like your emotions are taking over, direct your attention away from your emotions and to the task at hand.”
Now, I am a big advocate for “work the problem.” Not wasting energy on what you can’t control is excellent advice for everyone, and I’ve used it repeatedly. One of my anchors at work is: “How do we move forward from here?”
However telling me to redirect my attention like I’m a toddler having a tantrum because I want to play with the chainsaw just feels patronizing. And I’m fully aware that my perspective on that is directly related to my experience with bully boss. His MO was demeaning people in public and, if they had the courage to confront him at all (Guess who did?), telling them “calm down,” and my personal favorite, “That’s not what I said.”
This self-management exercise hasn’t been completely useless, though. I have begun to realize that with each passing day, I have less and less emotional investment in the work and the people around me. Recognizing you will never find your self-worth in anyone else’s approval is powerful and empowering.
So yeah, there’s that!
Okay, next:
“Take Control of Your Self-Talk: When you catch your self-talk sounding negative, turn it around by telling yourself positive things like ‘You’re doing fine’ or ‘This isn’t so bad.’”
Okay, no. Just no.
I strongly believe that your unconscious is always listening, so what you tell yourself is far more impactful than you think. “You’re doing fine,” is okay, just like, “You’re doing your best,” and I believe in self-compassion when I make a mistake. Self-compassion doesn’t let me off the hook. On the contrary, it helps me accept my humanness and imperfection, and then move on to do better — because doing better matters to me, and not to meet someone else’s standard.
“This isn’t so bad,” on the other hand, nauseates me on every level. It’s the thinking that has kept me from pursuing anything different. It’s the suffocating vines that have stifled my creativity and courage to do anything that would be considered “outside the lines,” even when I felt confident I had the ability and the drive to do it.
“This isn’t so bad,” is exactly the thinking that had a coworker telling me how she wakes up and realizes she doesn’t have any direction anymore. She’s just going through the motions and thinking, “Oh, we’re doing this now? Okay.”
Goddess, deliver me from that foul hell.
Now, I work harder, believe more in myself and what I can do, and create what I want because “This isn’t so bad” is the worst kind of stench that comes from a cat litter pan that hasn’t been changed in three weeks. “This isn’t so bad” is the language of the person I might have become, who’d given up and surrendered to the petrification of her heart and the putrification of her dignity.
This is not me.
“Focus Your Attention on Your Freedoms, Rather than Your Limitations: When you think that you have no control, take a closer look at what you do have control over. Focus your energy on remaining flexible and open-minded.”
This was by far the most powerful statement I read. I focus on my freedoms, rather than my limitations.
I question why I believe something isn’t possible and find that the excuses and conditions that hold me back are self-created. Which, naturally, means I can create something different by choosing to do so.
Consequently, I’ve written more consistently than I ever have. I’m pursuing projects that I would have talked myself out of six months ago. I have notes and ideas for additional projects, as well. I have renewed excitement and understanding.
It goes without saying that none of what I’m excited about has anything to do with the day job I’m currently in.
Awareness is everything
It never occurred to me that the miserable bully of a boss I was dealing with was himself stuck in a repeating pattern of bullying from his boss earlier, a man who sadly was also his father.
We work so hard to find success when most of us can’t even define it. Success for me would mean being happy with my own work and letting go of being in competition with anyone else.
Every single one of us shows up as the sum total of our life experiences, even and especially the ones outside of our work environment. We forget that. At least I often do.
The enlightening part of all of this has been realizing I was so caught up in what other people thought about me and wanting to fit in and get approval from other people that I’d lost sight of my own approval or honor or respect. And if it wasn’t for the feedback I’ve gotten over the last three years, I never would have delved deeper into my own BEing.
I never would have asked myself, “Who do I want to BE? How do I want to show up?” And I might never have concluded that I have stronger desires and ambitions than what are currently in front of me.
That performance review comment about being scary was a gift, a signal that I was stifling ambitions and desires that I really wanted to embrace. And a sign that I can embrace them more fully outside of the job structure.
I’m seeing all this space around me, outside of the daily exercises to feed someone else’s machine. And that space is all mine, to play and create in.
It’s vast and I hope more of you will see it and decide to spend more time there. I believe in you and what you can do.