People and All Their Peopleness

“I would love work so much if it wasn’t for all the people,” a person opened with during a recent coaching session. 

“What about all the people makes it hard for you to love work?” I was genuinely curious. 

“There are so many different personality types and you have to just manage them all. It’s exhausting. For one, my boss is really politically motivated and so they are always trying to get us to do a ton of extra work to make them look really good. And there’s so much pressure to do that, and I don’t have enough time as it is to do the work I have in front of me for our customers and product. There’s another manager who has so much anxiety and freaks out about huge things coming that it stresses the team out, mostly unnecessarily, in my opinion. Listening to everyone freak out and complain about them is really exhausting. I mean, I get it, and I want to help people out and feel heard. But it’s really taking a toll on me and my energy. I just end the work day exhausted, most days.”

Oh, I’ve been there. I understand exactly what toll all that can take, and the feeling of how exhausting it feels to “manage it all”: the conflicting behaviors, demands, and emotions people bring with them to work. I thought of the tools that I now have to navigate these situations as a person in recovery. 

“What would happen if you just let go,” I asked.

“Let go? I don’t even know what that means.”

“Well, say you are juggling on a spinning log in the middle of a churning rapid river. You’ve got five spinning plates on a stick that you’re balancing on one hand, and you’re juggling three balls with the other hand. How are you feeling?”

“Panicked and tiring out.”

“Let’s say the river current starts picking up speed. Your legs and feet are keeping up, spinning that log. How are you feeling now?”

“Really panicking and exhausted.”

“Right. Is it different than how you’re feeling at work?”

“No. It’s honestly a good analogy for my average day and week and it feels that exhausting.”

“OK. Let’s say you just let go and let the balls drop. Now how are you feeling?”

“Still a little panicked, but less. Worried about what’s happening to the balls — who’s picking them up? But I’m less tired now.”

“Now, what would happen if you dropped the stick and the plates?”

They closed their eyes. You could see them visibly relax.

“There’s so much less to worry about.”

“That’s great! You look more relaxed. How do you feel about your work now?”

“I think that what I can do is stop worrying a little bit about everyone else, and just focus on what I need to do — like balancing on that spinning log”

It was a great conversation. It helped solidify for me how important it is to be willing and ready to let some things go to focus on what’s most important. It also highlighted for me a principle that I learned in recovery, which is whenever I am upset, disturbed, angry, or having any sort of emotional problem, whatever the perceived outside cause is, the problem lies within me. I’m the one left with the anxious feelings. It’s how I perceive and handle things that happen in daily life that can get problematic. The good news is that if the problem truly lies within me, then there’s something I can do about it to restore my peace of mind and sense of balance. 

All day long, we’re presented with opportunities to get upset or disturbed about things out of our control: WiFi disruptions, prices at the grocery store or gas station, world events, people’s moods and behavior at work. I can choose to remember that my thoughts to those situations drive my responses which, in turn, affects how much of my peace of mind I can maintain, and how much energy I want to expend on things not in my control.

I want to be of service, in appropriate measures. But first I need to take care of my own self so that I can stay in an overall state of contentment and gratitude. Learning to let go and focus on what I’m able to take action on — my perceptions, my attitudes, my work within healthy boundaries — makes for a surprisingly productive and contented way of being. I can choose to anchor myself with gratitude in the face of the strong winds and storms that blow through from time to time.