Workplaces are microcosms of our society. Humans work there and they are not machines. It is natural that we will bring our emotions while working. It is unfair to expect that employees will bring with them the positive emotions such as love, happiness, high spirits, respectfulness, patience, pride, modesty and so on. Similarly, it is not realistic to expect that employees will leave behind the negative emotions such as anger, sadness, contempt, disgust, anxiety, fear and many such. As a student in school or college, we learn about the norms in the society and a workplace. Should we show emotions or not? If we show them, what are the do’s and don’ts?
Acceptance of self and everything around
Organizations study employee satisfaction and tend to do a few things to win over the hearts of their employees. There are various theories explaining the factors to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement. One of these theories attracts me – help the employee to be successful; we will see a direct impact on employee satisfaction and company’s financials. If we go by this theory, we have to focus on helping each employee find success.
The first and foremost thing to success is to accept the person with all his strengths and limitations. Often we do not accept our environment in its totality. We have strong likes and dislikes about various aspects of our environment; we rue over the shortcomings. Most often, our remorse takes us nowhere. Moreover, we hold ourselves in a surreal way rather than accepting our own self as a mosaic of positives and negatives.
The root causes behind fear, insecurities, hatred, anger and so on lie in lack of acceptance. Once we sort this out in our mind, life becomes easy, stress-free and enjoyable. The paradigm changes from ‘what I do not have’ to ‘what I have’.
Organizations and leaders must invest their energies on building the culture of acceptance of each other and acceptance of factors beyond one’s control. This makes the ride smooth and joyful because people look at the bright side of things and are motivated to make the most out of a given situation. The people who are uncomfortable with the environment of acceptance will leave for good. Such an environment of acceptance takes away fear and various such insecurities; thus, people show positive emotions such as ambitiousness, drive, joy and concern for others. These emotions are welcome at work!
There is a bad day Recognize it!
All of us do have a bad day. Things do not go right. Client is not happy with our work, a colleague falls sick and a pile of his work has landed on your desk, people need you at home urgently to attend to something serious, your boss is in a bad mood and gets angry with you seeking permission to leave early, your car breaks down, you lose your mobile phone and wallet somewhere.
People will advise you to calm down, take a few deep breaths, pray God, be objective, not be judgemental, not blame it on stars of the day, not to be reactive and so on.
It’s okay to tell people that you are having a bad day and seek their understanding. It doesn’t make sense to fake a smile, put up a brave face and prove to the others that you are a strong human. It doesn’t help anyone; rather it wears us down and builds a lot of tension and stress which are completely avoidable!
Adapt and Communicate
Every place has its own norm and it changes over a period of time. The way our parliamentarians behave inside the parliament these days is very different from the way they did 3-4 decades ago. The norms of expressing oneself have been changing. Hence, it is important that we learn the norms fast and follow them.
Communicating one’s feelings, positive or negative, in an appropriate manner lightens the burden and sets one free to do one’s routine. It is a good idea to confide in someone trustworthy if you are not sure how to deal with the emotions running through the body and mind.
Finally, there is no reason why you should torture yourself bearing the burden of pent-up feelings and hurt. In spite of one’s best attempts, if you are unable to let them go and keep your sight on a better and brighter tomorrow, there is no point bearing the pain. Be authentic and move on!
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You may also like to read: The Pursuit of Happiness: What it (Really) Takes to Have happy employees at your Enterprise
