Mental Health – Page 2 – mardihumphreys.com

The Uns

James C. Collins coined the phrase, “Good is the enemy of great.” He suggests we have to remove some good things from our lives so we can focus attention on achieving bigger goals. Since we are stuck sheltering in our homes a little longer, (Thank you, COVID-19.) maybe now is an appropriate time for evaluation. Are we satisfied with the state of our lives? Do we need to take a hard look at our priorities? Should we trim some good items so we can excel? Are we ready to make some uncomfortable but necessary choices? If so, how?

Uninvite

We are highly influenced by the people who surround us. They can determine the quality and direction of our lives; much like the wind influences a sailboat. People treat us the way we let them, so let’s make respect one of our boundaries. Let’s be intentional about networking with positive people who have standards we admire. Let’s treat coworkers the way we want to be treated and associate with those who reciprocate. This can be hard. We don’t always have the luxury of choosing whom we work with and our emotions can get in the way, but let’s not reward bad behavior (e.g., our opinions and/or feelings are ignored). If a team mate consistently gossips in the break room, shoves her busy work on us, or complains about how she never gets high-profile assignments, it’s time to uninvite her from our projects.

Untie

Time flies when we’re making a living. In our efforts to keep moving forward, we neglect to stop and assess where we are, what has changed, and how outdated thinking may be holding us back. Do we believe we can’t do something just because we’ve never tried it? Thanks to technology, what was unthinkable 10 years ago is now normal. (Think Lyft, Instagram, Amazon Echo) Are we making choices based on what our circumstances were then? We can’t use the same decision making criteria on our first full-time job that we used in college. We can’t use the same criteria as a spouse that we used when we were single. We can’t use the same criteria as a parent that we used before children, but we can untie ourselves from the past by using a filter like: Is it worth my T.E.A.M.?

Unexpected

We can’t predict there is anything better than what we have now and we don’t realize we’re settling for good. Going for more requires change and we don’t like what we can’t expect. Maybe we start by asking ourselves what we do better than anyone else. If we don’t know, we can ask a friend or trusted coworker. We’re usually counseled to build up our weaknesses in order to succeed, but I think we should spend more time cultivating our strengths. Getting less weak at something takes more time, energy, and attention (for marginal improvement) than getting better at something we’re already good at. Let’s stop binging Tiger King and read a leadership book, listen to an industry podcast, or take an online class.

What are some good things you need to eliminate to make room in your life to pursue great things?

Here Comes the Judge

We judge situations and people every day: Is this job the best fit for me? Is this guy going to hurt me? Should I hire a math tutor for my son? Often, we have to assess them with very little information. We’re also on the other end of evaluation. We look in someone’s eyes, feel them examining us, and assume we come up short of their standards. That doesn’t make judging bad. It’s our mindset that’s in question. What happens when we judge ourselves? Why do we judge others? What habits can we adopt to turn our negative judgement into positive?

Ourselves:

We are inclined to be our own worst critics. If we weren’t, affirmations would not exist (e.g., “It’s okay to be a powerful woman”) We have to intentionally remind ourselves we’re good enough, we’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like us because we face adversity every day and we think we’re the cause of it. Yes, we reap what we sow, but sometimes life just happens. We can be really good at our jobs and then a pandemic comes along and our company lays us off. We habitually blame ourselves for the random misfortune in our lives, “If I were smarter, I would’ve sold my quota of widgets this month.” After a while, we maintain a low level of self-induced anxiety and it can be addicting. Why do we do this? Are we trying to protect ourselves from failure? Are we trying to use criticism to motivate ourselves to action?

Others:

Confession time: I’m judging people’s reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. I find myself thinking negatively about those who: aren’t in high risk categories being scared, are vocal about the inconvenience of their favorite doughnut shop being temporarily closed, or say our state’s leaders are overreacting. Then my own words slap me in the face: “Don’t judge others by the way you think.” I feel like fear is at the root of judgement. We’re jealous of what others have. We have to get along with people whose opinion is very foreign to ours. We think someone wants to take advantage of us. We’re afraid we’re wrong, we won’t have enough, or we’ll look stupid. Fear is useful when we use it as a warning system, but how do we keep it in its place?

Habits:

Realize we’re doing it. When we have a judgmental thought, we can stop and label it. Is it true? If not, let’s cast it aside and purposefully replace it with a true and positive thought.

Meditation. Whether it’s prayer, mindfulness, or quiet time, stopping to breathe, catalog thoughts, and decide which ones need redirection or discarded strengthens our accuracy in judging both situations and people.

Forgive ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes and they usually aren’t as consequential as we initially assume. Our culture pushes us to be better and do better; but if we do our best, that’s enough to feel good about and try again tomorrow.

What do you do to keep judgment in its place? Please share in the comments section.

I Ran So Far Away

Erma Bombeck was right. The grass is always greener over the septic tank. At some point in our careers we’ve all had managers we loathe for any (or all) of these reasons:

He lives in his own reality
He takes credit for our success
He belittles our opinions
He doesn’t respect our boundaries

Then, we get a job offer. It’s:

More than 40 hours a week
Less money
A longer commute
The benefits aren’t as good as our current job
The required skills aren’t exactly in our wheelhouse

We impulsively quit the job we hate instead of asking ourselves, “Is it worth our T.E.A.M.?” Taking a job out of desperation to get away from the job we have allows our emotions to make the decision, and putting them in charge is usually not a wise choice. We should run to a new job, not from our current one.

We tell ourselves:

We can make it work
It’s not as bad as our last position
We’ll talk the boss into quickly advancing us

But after a couple of months, it’s not looking good. Now that we’re stuck, what do we do?

Give it Time

If we can stand it, we should stay in a job for one year to get through the normal growing pains of getting used to a new routine, new people, and a new environment. For example: we’ve joined an already established team. We won’t make friends on day one. We have to research:

Who is territorial?
Who is threatened by our being hired?
Who is jealous we got the position they were going for?
Whom can we trust?
Who pushes their own agenda?

If we assume an attitude of learning and ask how we can make our team mates’ projects easier, we’ll quickly find out what motivates them and how to best communicate with them.

Do a Self-assessment

What drove us away from our last job?
Was it only our toxic boss or were there other factors?
Was the environment dysfunctional?
Was there no diversity on our staff?

Make notes. If this job doesn’t work out, we don’t want to repeat history. We need to figure out our strengths. At our last job, were we in the field visiting clients the majority of the day and now we are tied to a desk and hate it? As for the current job, we should think about why we are unhappy and what it would take to make it work. Can we mold the position into something fulfilling? (Can it be more client facing than Excel facing?) Does it give us access to a better network? (Can we leverage networking events to find out who is hiring?) Will it pay for professional development opportunities? (Mastermind groups, Leadership cohorts, or an MBA?) Let’s consider what we really want from a job, so we can form a plan to move forward.

Talk to Someone

Vent to a friend, trusted coworker from our last job, or mentor; then ask them to objectively analyze our situation. Their encouragement and support will help, but the most valuable thing they can do is repeat back to us what they heard us say about our job. It will take some emotion out of the situation and help us think more objectively about our next steps.

Have you ever taken a job because you were desperate to get away from your current one? Please share how that worked out in the comments section.

What Difference Does it Make?

Last year there was huge buzz around Marie Kondo and her movement to spark joy through tidying up. If you followed her method, do you still feel joy from the things you kept? If not, maybe tidying up just made you happy instead of joyful. Here in the doldrums of winter, let’s brighten things up a bit by discussing the difference between happiness and joy and what we have to do to get them.

What’s the Difference?

Happiness – is a temporary and fleeting emotion. It’s a result of what’s going on in our lives at the moment (e.g., landing a big account or going on vacation). Happiness is external and pretty much out of our control. It’s experiencing positivity, gaining fulfillment, and getting what we want. Happiness is a consequence of good fortune; like how we feel when we reach a goal (e.g., a promotion). It’s a feeling and feelings can change in a New York minute.

Joy – is permanent and comes from within us. It depends only on our behavior; as opposed to how someone else’s behavior affects our moods. We have to choose joy. It doesn’t just come naturally. For example, we can choose to like ourselves for our kindness instead of berate ourselves for not yet losing those last ten pounds. Joy is closely associated with peace of mind. We can build it and allow it to evolve as we discover what people, places, and things bring us comfort. Joy is wanting what we have. It’s a state of being content in all circumstances. Joy requires a growth mindset. It is unique to the individual and can dictate the steps we take to attain our goals. Cultivating joy is definitely worth our T.E.A.M.

How Do We Achieve Them at Work?

Happiness – We can set and meet S.M.A.R.T. goals, make $60,000 – $95,000 a year, take a coffee break, text a friend, or listen to a song. We can routinely treat ourselves to small diversions to refresh our dispositions. If we don’t like our jobs (e.g., digging ditches) we can unearth an aspect outside of our tasks that we do like (e.g., my muddy buddy in the ditch beside me could be a stand up comedian).

Joy – We can practice gratitude: be thankful we have jobs and hot cups of coffee. We can discover meaning and purpose in our work. We can choose to further our personal development. We can let offenses go and not dwell on the negative. We can do what’s necessary to obtain peace of mind (e.g., prepare for a client presentation for an entire week ahead of the meeting). We can adjust our attitudes. We can cut back on social media; especially the platforms that promote competition (look where I went, whom I’m with, what I’m eating). We can take on challenges and risks and not give up until we’ve competed the tasks. Then, we can celebrate our successes no matter how small.

What are you doing to build joy into your work life? Please share in the comments section below.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

And just like that…it’s December. Welcome to the end of the year! As we push to make our quotas, thank our customers for their business, and prepare for holiday celebrations, let’s schedule time in our calendars for play. You read me. I wrote p-l-a-y. There are plenty of opportunities this month for frivolity and we should take advantage of them for a very practical reason. Play helps us work.

Lynn Barnett, a professor of recreation, sports and tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, “At work, play has been found to speed up learning, enhance productivity and increase job satisfaction.” In this article, she also says, “Highly playful adults feel the same stressors as anyone else, but they appear to experience and react to them differently, allowing stressors to roll off more easily than those who are less playful.” In his book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Dr. Stuart Brown says, “Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job…work does not work without play.”

For example, when we concentrate on figuring out a problem, our minds can get stuck in an endless loop going over the same details. If we take a break and focus on something else, we get new data to process. Although it’s counterintuitive; the more stress we’re under, the more we need play in order to function. When we get up from our desks and move around, blood flow to our brains increases and we think better. If we walk to the break room and enter a conversation, we foster teamwork. These activities refresh our energy and can prevent burnout by letting our brains reboot and receive input that has nothing to do with our problem. We naturally apply this new data to our challenge. We start to think creatively. We stop thinking about how we’ve solved problems in the past. We stop worrying about the consequences for a minute and imagine what would happen if anything goes. This permits us to relax and look at it from another angle. The situation looks totally different if we’re standing on our heads instead of our feet. When we see something differently and present it in a new light, that’s innovation and it might just trigger a solution. Gymnastics anyone?

For play to have a positive effect on our work we should do it everyday, so we need to schedule it and give it priority. Play is an activity that has no purpose and is considered non-productive. We can do it alone or with others. Here are some examples of play that don’t necessarily cost money:

Read a book
Pet your pet
Watch your favorite artist’s concert footage on YouTube
Drive around looking at neighborhood Christmas lights
Toss a football
Crossword puzzles
Board games

George Bernard Shaw said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” This holiday season when kids are defined as from one to ninety-two, let’s make time to play.

Please share how you’re going to incorporate play into your seasonal celebration in the comments section.

Just Adjust

Tenacity is when we try something, but if it doesn’t work we try different ways to achieve the same goal. Here’s why and how we should develop tenacity on the job.

Why:

Tenacity is a hard ability to train, so tenacious employees earn the respect of both their managers and peers. Workers willing to do what is necessary for the business to endure downturns are the ones who get to keep their jobs. Successful people are tenacious. Doing hard things and seeing them through to completion gives us confidence. We develop mental toughness and keep going when others quit. Most people expect Plan A to work every time, but how often does that really happen? There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Let’s be unafraid to go back to a failed Plan A and revise it to make a Plan B, Plan C, or however many letters it takes to overcome the setback. Let’s learn how to not make the same mistake twice. Making new mistakes is much more fun.

How:

Perceive failures as experiments: When we think we’ve spent all our energy and ideas on overcoming our obstacle, let’s give it one more try and change the input to achieve a better outcome. Often, the answer lies just beyond what we think we’re capable of.
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals: We’ll filter our responsibilities through them. E.g., if we want to be the team’s SME for JavaScript, how do the tasks on our daily to-do lists get us closer to that goal?
Identify a coworker as a friendly rival. We’ll find someone who is competing for the same promotion or the same client, etc., and use her as the bar against which we measure our work. Does she know Excel better than us? We can take an online class (many are free with a library card) to increase our knowledge. I call competing with someone who is on my team “coopetition.” (Think Group Round during Hollywood Week on American Idol). We strive to outperform this person because we admire her success. We can use this as motivational fuel to course correct when we’re struggling. This study says we succeed when our rival succeeds. We can learn from her mistakes as well as build on her successes.
Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Let’s hang out with tenacious people: professional groups, friends, family, and people with our job title from other companies. We can also read biographies of tenacious people and study what they did.
Tenacious people are comfortable with being uncomfortable. If our fear of failure is holding us back, let’s do something about it. Let’s sift through the symptoms to get to the root. (Journaling may help us see it easier.) Then take baby steps every day to overcome it.

Tenacity comes through practice. The bad news is, this means facing adversity over and over again. The good (?!) news is, life gives us plenty of adversity to practice with.

Please share your story of how you’re developing tenacity in the comments section below.

There’s Nothing More Scary Than Losing Your Mind

Have you ever been gaslighted at work? The term, taken from the title of a 1938 play, refers to the process of someone slowly driving someone else crazy through psychological manipulation. It’s a specific pattern of emotional abuse and is considered workplace harassment. When it’s done by your manager, it’s very similar to Corporate Stockholm Syndrome. Since the manipulation is customized to the target, there’s no one-size-fits-all description, but here’s what gaslighting could look like coming from a coworker.

Behavior:

They consistently manipulate your perception of reality and refuse to talk about it (e.g., “I didn’t touch you inappropriately. I don’t have to listen to this.”).
They break the rules and claim you’re the one who broke them (e.g., you catch them lying and they blame you for forcing them to lie).
They withhold information you need (e.g., “The client meeting is today. Did you forget again?”).
They are ambitious, smart, critical, and have low self-esteem.
They can’t handle negative feedback, jockey for leadership positions on the team, and sabotage your work (e.g., change deadlines after you start working on the project).
They make passive aggressive comments that come off as funny.
They are charming and have great people skills.
They are office gossips; getting others to engage so they have more dirt on more coworkers.
They take credit for your ideas and when you call them on it, they say they had to tweak your idea to make it work, so it was no longer yours.

Why it happens:

They see you as competition. To get ahead, they gaslight you to make you look incompetent to management or to get you fired.
They want you to behave the way they choose while avoiding responsibility for their manipulation.
Controlling you makes them feel powerful.

Signs:

By its very nature (done slowly and sneakily), it can be hard to identify.

They make you doubt your skills, intelligence, and/or your sense of reality.
They give you backhanded compliments (e.g., “Great job on the presentation. I thought for sure you’d choke.”).
If you feel paranoid all the time (not just at work), confused (second-guessing your memory), too sensitive, overreactive, guilty, and/or depressed, you may be a victim of gaslighting.

What you should do:

Document everything; seeing the abuse in words helps you decide if gaslighting is actually happening (i.e., you are not imagining it) and it gives you proof to take to HR if you choose to.
Keep gaslighting emails they sent you in a folder under your inbox and forward them to your private email account, so you have a backup. If your company has access to your work email, just keep the evidence in your private email account.
Write down descriptions of inappropriate interactions as soon as they happen before you forget what was said, done, and where it happened. Email these documents to both your work and private accounts so they will be time and date stamped.
Ask your coworkers if it’s happening to them too. If so, ask them to document their interactions also. HR is more likely to believe you if you can prove the gaslighter is treating coworkers the same way they’re treating you.
When meeting with the gaslighter, have at least one other person in the meeting to verify what was said.
Call the gaslighter out on their behavior and words. Know your worth and expertise and hold your boundaries.
Remind yourself that you are smart and capable.

Please share your experience of being gaslighted in the comments section below.

Corporate Stockholm Syndrome is Real

While researching last week’s post, I stumbled across something I’d never heard of before: Corporate Stockholm Syndrome (CSS). It’s when an employee becomes deeply loyal to an employer who is abusive (e.g., yells at employees, expects employees to work long hours, requires employees to handle his personal errands). For a good example of this, watch the movie (or read the book), The Devil Wears Prada. Stockholm Syndrome is a phrase first coined in the 1970s to refer to a hostage who felt empathy toward her captor because even though she was abused, the captor was also the source of food, water, shelter, etc. Since a manager can also be viewed as a source of those things, when the manager is abusive, the employee experiences CSS.

1. Problems

As employees, we get a great deal of self-esteem from our jobs. This becomes problematic if our manager habitually mistreats us. An employee suffering from CSS is emotionally attached to the company and puts its needs before her own; even if that means she gets traumatized in the process. The employee is micromanaged. Her work is scrutinized and, if it displeases the manager, criticized. When she wants to advance within the company, especially to another manager’s team, her manager refuses to allow the move.

2. Symptoms

Physical: headaches, insomnia, fatigue
Mental/Emotional: fear, distrust, anger, shame, denial she’s being mistreated.
Company: the manager isolates the employee from upper management, coworkers verbally abuse each other, the company offers fringe benefits that promote loyalty to the company

3. Results

The employee is stressed out, her reputation possibly tarnished by her manager, and afraid of what will happen if she complains to Human Resources. She thinks telling someone will get back to the manager and make things worse (e.g., lose her job or not get promoted). In 2017, the Workplace Bullying Institute discovered more than 60 million employees in the US had been affected by bullying or abuse on the job. CSS is contagious. Coworkers who witness the abuse may not speak up for fear they’ll be mistreated too.

4. Solutions

It’s important to maintain healthy relationships outside of the office. Get a reality check from one of yours. Ask, “Do you see this happening?” “Is this normal?” If you’re a victim of CSS, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to change your manager’s behavior. Your best alternative is to get a new job. (That sentence makes it sound easy. I know it’s not.) Look for a company that rewards supervisors for promoting high performers. While you’re searching, take time to heal. Write down your achievements. Seek validation and encouragement from friends and family. Consider visiting a psychologist who does cognitive behavioral therapy to undo the thinking patterns created by the abuse. Be good to yourself outside of work: exercise, use a meditation app, plan something to look forward to (e.g., a concert, a vacation, the next five books you want to read). Be as good to yourself as you would be to a friend who is going through these circumstances.

Have you ever been the victim of CSS? Please share your story in the comments section below.