A friend confided that, lately, he goes home from work every day feeling like a failure.
He is in charge of a sales organization that has been slipping ever since he took over a few months ago. The pressure from upper management is tremendous. It seems like everything is stacked against him – the tough economy, internal politics, the negative morale of his people — yet every day he comes to work, sucks it up, and fights like heck to turn it around.
He hasn’t yet started with the facial ticks and twitching, but I know it’s been taking a toll.
Unfortunately, a similar refrain is playing for many others in the hyper-competitive work world, where an otherwise mentally stable group of individuals are disintegrating under the mandate to get more done with fewer resources while facing escalating expectations for results. Even when a win is scored, it is quickly forgotten. “What have you done for me lately?” seems to be the only message one hears anymore.
It’s no wonder, then, that the most natural order of things is to beat ourselves up with negative self-talk:“Why can’t I be more effective? I’ll never figure this out!” ”They’re going to fire me any minute!” Thus begins a downward spiral of self-conscious stress, which leads to lost confidence, and everyone knows you don’t make good decisions when you are feeling overwhelmed with stress and negative feelings.
So, how to overcome such a gnarly beast? Well, here’s an idea.
Research shows that turning around the self talk can make an enormous difference in your ability to handle things. Treating yourself kindly through “self-compassion” can vastly improve your outlook, by focusing on the positive and being more optimistic.
Self-compassionate people have been shown to be not only happier, but also better able to cope with stress, whether it is a major life event or a minor inconvenience. Much of it involves changing our interpretation of what is happening around us, our role in it, to realize that the fate of the entire universe does not depend on us, after all. That job belongs to Someone Else.
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