The real deal is that a lot of our emotional stress and discontent can stem from stressful working environments. Too many employees, all over the world, can identify with feeling unfulfilled, underpaid, overworked, and very unappreciated on their jobs.
12 Ways to Keep Sane and Productive in Mean and Crazy Workplaces
By Norka Blackman
A
s women, we often take home the residues of our stressful workplaces with us. We are often too tired to function properly or even normally. This leads us to be in a constant state of moodiness and fatigue. We can become so overwhelmed by this employment fatigue that we begin to find ways to avoid social interactions and even intimacy with those closest to us.
How can we best deal with the crazyness at work?
The real deal is that a lot of our emotional stress and discontent can stem from stressful working environments. Too many employees, all over the world, can identify with feeling unfulfilled, underpaid, overworked, and very unappreciated on their jobs. For many an initially promising career has become just a job - nothing more, nothing less. Not only is a lack of passion the culprit, but also having to deal with so many other job related matters, the cause of our discontent. Too many employees today testify of laboring in workplaces with mean colleagues, overbearing bosses, impossible workloads, unfair work policies, and often emotionally unhealthy environments.
Unfortunately there’s a back lash to all of this, particularly for women. We take home the residues of our stressful workplaces with us. Our children, husbands, boyfriends, friends and relatives are the ones who receive the brunt of our job dissatisfaction. We are often too tired to function properly or even normally. This leads us to be in a constant state of moodiness and fatigue. We can become so overwhelmed by this employment fatigue that we begin to find ways to avoid social interactions and even intimacy with those closest to us. This is how and why women evade having sex with their husbands for long periods of time, “unconsciously” authorize TV, electronic games, and music videos to raise their children, and begin to prefer isolation instead of live human interaction.
Unless we find another job with safer emotional working conditions our work environment will continue to seriously affect our interactions with those closest to us.
And while finding another job is a viable option, perhaps it is something that you are not prepared to do financially. In the meantime you can find ways of dealing with your reality. This does not mean that if you do stay, your situation is hopeless. You always have the authority to change you - if nothing else. The most powerful thing about changing you is that when you decide to do so, people and situations surrounding you will also automatically change.
So here are our 12 suggestions to exercise noticeable change in your workplace:
1. Optimize your work space - The lighting, seating, setting, and noise level in your work space can affect your physical response and therefore your effectiveness and creativity. Don’t use your company’s policies as an excuse. If you can’t get your employer to finance a physical makeover of your space, invest in it on your own. Find ways of rearranging, sprucing up, and fixing up. You’ll be investing in your own creativity and productivity.
2. Keep your workspace clean and organized – even if no one else does – There’s nothing more telling of a working environment than how its workspaces are kept. Disorganized offices, cubicles, and desks are an indication of disorganized, careless, eleventh-hour workers. Your workspace is a reflection of the quality work you deliver. Even if no one else does, keep your area clean.
3. Say what you mean and mean what you say - Stay out of office politics, but make sure that whatever you say within closed quarters you can repeat in public. Never offer or add information that will damage anyone personally unless you are willing to say it to their face. When you must communicate do so in a clear confident manner.
4. Cancel your membership to the workplace clique – Every work place has it – the inner circle. Usually comprised by those with seniority or by those who have been lead to believe – usually by their immediate superiors- that they are in some way above the rest of employees. New employees and unpopular workers can feel ostracized and at a disadvantage if they are not part of this circle. Reality is that these cliques are usually cut-throat, disloyal, and ruthless. Stay away from them.
5. Don’t allow your work environment to define you – When shopping, dressing, even buying lunch stick to the reality of what you can afford. Working at a Fortune 500 company may not mean that your personal salary reflects that, stick to your reality. Never spend money to impress colleagues you may open a door that you’ll not be able to handle in the near future.
6. Don’t take work home – Don’t call colleagues after work to gossip about office occurrences. Remember that you do have another life away from the office. Invest time in your real life, and in those who form part of it.
7. Don’t take your home to your workplace either– Leave your personal issues home where they belong. Because we spend so much time in the workplace we think that it gives us permission to share our personal lives with colleagues. Make a distinction - your colleagues are your professional work partners. They are not your therapists or counselors, and perhaps some are not even worthy of being your close friends.
8. Be committed to getting the job done – It’s simple. It doesn’t matter who isn’t doing their job or doing it right, you do yours. That’s what you are being paid for.
9. Live up to your personal principles – Be clear about who you are and what you stand for. Don’t compromise your values for no thing or no one. Once you are clear about your own position on issues others will eventually fall into place. Remember what you need from them is respect for your value system not approval or acceptance.
10. Keep your head above the waters - Keep a step ahead of problems and misunderstandings. Practice documenting, writing letters, and keeping open lines of communication with superiors. Make sure that you keep an informed and clear opinion about what you see as a possible problem. Be quick to communicate and act in prevention of possible problems.
11. Be professional – From flipping burgers to running an executive office, every job has its protocol and policies. Stick to them, follow them. Dress like a professional, answer the phone like a professional, carry yourself in a professional manner even if you are washing dishes or cleaning bathrooms. Your job performance and outcomes will say much about your character.
12.Hold yourself accountable to a higher creed – It’s not about pleasing your boss or even making the company look good, it’s about maintaining a personal reputation of high standards. What’s your purpose for working there? Only to pay the bills? Even so, your name and reputation are on the line daily. Everything you do carries your name on it. Do a good job because it represents you – it tells the world who you are and what you stand for.
© Copyright 2006, written by Norka Blackman-Richards
Norka Blackman-Richards is a member of the National Association of Women Writers. She is an educator, a writer, a full-time minister’s wife, and a sought-after motivational speaker for women. She is also the founder and president of www.4realwomen.com & www.4realwomen.com/espanol.
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