I had an interesting experience recently and thought I would share my life lesson.
I started a new job and transition has been…difficult. I’m not going to say it is all their fault, so it’s 99.9999% should suffice. I’m not perfect, but I’m a pretty smart guy. If you can built the staircase, I won’t have any problem climbing it. The issue is that this team has been way behind and shorthanded for several months. The workload is way beyond what they could handle. So, there are some conditions outside of their control. The biggest issue is that there is no training program, no onboarding plan. So, they have no staircase. They don’t even have tools to build a staircase. They just kind of looked at me told me to figure out how get to the second floor.
This really isn’t all that uncommon in the corporate world. I chatted with my work buddy about this and she agreed that she had never seen a training and onboarding plan except for the teams that she and I built and executed them.
I was talking to one the other people in my office and our conversation took a random turn. She had asked me something the day prior and my stress and frustration got the best of me. I wasn’t mean to her, I responded with an overwhelmed desperation. The conversation started on training and she expertly moved the conversation into dealing with stress and understanding situations we are in. I was actually caught off guard by the feedback. I said thank you and left to chew on my thoughts.
I realized I had built a cycle of stress and frustration for myself. I felt I was being set up to fail, so when I went into work I was looking for difficulties. To no one’s surprise, I found what I was looking for on a regular basis. I was in a cycle of self fulfilling prophesy that I didn’t even know I was in. It took someone outside of me to stick their foot out and trip me to get me to stop. Once I realized what I was doing, I was able to put some effort into breaking the cycle, to focus on the good things that happen. The next day, a one thing went right and it blew my whole day up…in a good way. I was so happy after something going right that another thing went right!
When we encounter struggles, we can choose to focus on one of two things. Whichever one you look for will be the one you find. If you get stuck in a negative cycle, allow the people who care for you to break you out and get you back on the right path.
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