Archive for December, 2008
Day 29 of 30 – No Complaining – Listen to Your Fear
You and I are constantly having to make adjustments at work. There are probably some nights when you don’t get a lot of sleep. We’ve all been through tough sleeping cycles. I’ll bet you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve heard, “I’m tired,” in a “drag the nails along a chalk board” voice by a fellow co-worker. Why do people complain about stuff they can’t change?
Many of us complain because we don’t feel like adjusting to something new. Monday mornings are a tough adjustment for 9-5’ers because they’ve been able to unwind and enjoy relaxed feelings for two days. We don’t want to go back to work and deal with the stress. We love the weekends and we’ll complain about it until we… well, until something comes along to make us happy again. The problem with complaining is that we stay focused on the negative. I talked about this concept in my post, Day 8 of 30 – No Complaining. When we stay attached to our expectations of what we think life should be, we can’t enjoy the positive within the changing moment.
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Your Personality Should Explode Throughout Your Work Space
Every business depends on personality to help them stand out from the crowd. Why do you buy coffee from one coffee shop instead of the one across the street? Maybe it’s cleaner or you enjoy a nice conversation with the store owner every time you buy a cup of Joe. It’s the character of the place that gets you to keep going back.
I heard a radio commercial for a lawyer who brands himself as the DUI Dude. I bet every major city has a lawyer who advertises toward the young crowd. They do this because they know that young people don’t know their limits and end up crashing into a tree.
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Mind Training Matters
I found an excellent talk from the website TED. Matthieu Ricard is a monk who emphasizes the importance of developing emotional intelligence. He presents the idea that we can train the mind so it handles situations in the way that we want to. Some of these monks have such intense control that when a bomb goes off they are able to process their thoughts so quickly that they don’t react.
We can also train our minds to do a better job of dealing with frustration, low motivation, and other emotional barriers.
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Day 23 of 30 – Change Spurs Complaining
My job is changing for the positive and negative. Upper management is switching my office to a new location, which means my commute is going to be an extra 2.5 hours each week. That’s nothing to dismiss. An extra 10 hours a month in the car. Ouch! They are also broadening the type of work that I do, which is exciting and scary. I’m going to be more accountable for the company’s wins and losses.
This spurred on a barrage of venting to my wife, who is understandably tired of hearing me complain about my job. I’ve always wanted to own my own business, but was never ready. I’m mentally ready, but not monetarily ready. She gave me the tough love that I needed, but wasn’t looking for. She told me to either suck it up or find a new job. I didn’t want to hear this, not in that moment.
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Personal Development at Work
Being happy at work means growing as an individual. The funny thing is most of us don’t equate personal development with our jobs. We see them as separate entities that don’t belong together. I believe this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The reason why personal development and happiness at work are forever linked together is simple. The better we are at cultivating relationships and productivity, the more we enjoy our jobs.
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Day 18 of 30 – Bonus – No Complaining
One day I’m complaining about the weather then the next day may be a similar day of weather and I’m enjoying it. My mood dictates my complaining.
I’ve been documenting my successes and difficulties of no complaining for the month of December. My complaining hasn’t reduced that much; I wish that I could report that it has, but I must be honest.
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Day 16 of 30 – No Complaining
No complaining can feel fake. I complain to get empathy. This social skill that I’ve strengthened and perfected over the last thirty years is no longer available. This isn’t easy to let go. Like I said in my last update – Day 8 of No Complaining, I’ve fallen off the complaining wagon many times. I’ve been able to catch my mistakes more quickly, but you and I know that old habits only die with a lot of effort.
It was time to put up Christmas lights and I don’t get excited about stringing lights from one end of the house to the other, but I does encourage a festive atmosphere. My technique used to always be to complain about my sacrifice, (oh how hard I work) get my wife to thank me for all my future effort, then get it done as quickly as possible.
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Creating A Project Ritual to Encourage Happiness
I’ve been working on my procrastination habits. Havi of the Fluent Self has a great procrastination program that many of you should consider buying if you have trouble with getting stuff done. Here is my review of her program.
Havi’s programs gave me the idea to design a little ritual to put myself in the right frame of mind before I continue working on a project. My problem was not being able to start. My problem has always been finishing. My procrastination kicks in when I’m in the final stages of the project. I begin second guessing myself and its direction.
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Great Leadership Requires Great Communication – Duh!
The problem with my title is everyone knows this, but then why doesn’t everyone do it? Because we get caught up in our egos, making office politics king, instead of creating open lines of communication so everyone is in the loop.
The CEO (Tony Hsieh) of Zappos (a brilliant online shoe company), published an email to his employees on his blog that explained why they laid off 8% of their employees. It was a brilliant way to communicate to the employees of Zappos.
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Day 8 of 30 – No Complaining
I can’t say that I was perfect. Man-o-man did I slip up more than once. I caught myself on the phone complaining to a co-worker about my salary. With so many people losing their jobs, I decided to stop myself in mid-sentence and I changed the topic. It may not be the perfect job, but at least I work with good people.
No complaining has been harder than I expected because it’s a part of how I communicate with my co-workers. I don’t think all complaining is bad – far from it. The reason I started this 30 day trial was to become more aware of my thoughts and actions and see if I might want to implement “no complaining” into the rest of my life.
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