Working That Attitude Thing

Working That Attitude Thing

Why do I try my best? What makes me give my all? How do I deliver excellence?

How do you feel when you see those questions? Happy? Excited? Anxious? Hopeless?

Feeling productive, feeling accomplished, feeling pride in what we do; these things are so important to our well being. It’s one of the reasons we ask these questions a lot.

I used to think that my productivity, my attitude, my results, were partly dependent on you. If you told me I was worthless, I didn’t work as hard, because why bother, and then I sink into the misery of low self-esteem. Or I redoubled my efforts to try to get you to change your mind. What a sad mislearning, not taking responsibility for myself.

But, here we are, again, with that attitude thing. I know, I know, what a pain in the patootie, that attitude thing. The sooner I can accept that I can change my attitude, the sooner I can start living my nice life.

If I have a job I hate, I have at minimum three choices. (This works for a lot of situations.)

I can accept it. That is not the same thing as resigning myself to it. Giving up and letting go are two different things. The first drops me into hopelessness and despair. The second is about releasing our negative judgments and finding a way to accept, maybe even love, our situation.

I can change it. Now, accepting a situation will often require us to change inside. Sometimes what we need to do is change things on the outside. Perhaps what I need to do is find an ally, or swap tasks with someone. Maybe I need to change my hours, or my work station. Sometimes this is all it takes to make things better.

I can leave it. For many of us, this seems like a great solution to a crummy situation, but here is an icky truth about leaving. If the situation is a pattern for us, we will find it wherever we go, and we will be confronted with our pattern again and again until we resolve it. There are lots of ways to resolve our patterns, but do it we must if we want to stop repeating ourselves.

And now, since I have accepted it, changed it, or cleanly left it, I am back to my natural life. I am naturally service minded. I want to contribute to my communities. I want to deliver excellence, and I will go the extra mile for the joy of it.

Why do I like what I do? Why can I choose? Why am I happy? What makes me feel efficient? How am I effective? Why am I on purpose?

So often, all I need to do is find a compelling reason to do something I don’t want to do, and I can enjoy it, or find satisfaction in the doing, or feel virtuous, or proud, or something.

Sometimes, I can turn it into play. I can see how quickly I can get something done well. I can see how many Xs I can finish in a block of time. I can pretend to be someone who enjoys the task, make up a name, a persona, and let myself become that person for a while, like I did when I was little. Sometimes, I can resort to self-bribery; I get to do X after I have done Y.

Whatever it takes to make it mine.

How have I changed from hating what I do to finding the value, finding the gift?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04072014

Did you get a little inspiration to make your tasks more fun, or interesting? Did you find an answer to something you were wondering about? If you found something to like in today's post, please + and share. How do you feel when you matter?

I Tsked at the Task

I Tsked at the Task

When I am happy and engaged, doing work that seems to have a point to it, I strive to do a great job. I want to support our mutual  goals with my best work. That’s easy, I can do it with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. So to speak.

On the other hand, when I feel isolated, when I don’t know what the point of this tedious task is, when I don’t know what your goals are, doing my best work takes a different skill set. I need both eyes, and both hands.

Used to be that when I had a task giver like that, one who withheld information, who didn’t include me, I felt that I should do a half assed job as a kind of passive aggressive commentary on his, or her, behavior.

It’s the “bring me a rock” scenario, for one. “What kind of a rock?” “I’ll know it when I see it.”

So, in days gone by, I would have behaved poorly and felt both vindicated and ashamed.

Poor me, it was so challenging and unpleasant being a passive aggressive dork.

Curiously, I kept encountering task-givers who favored the :Bring me a Rock style of task-giving. Finally, I had to accept that this was a pattern of mine.

Dang it.

So then I had to ask myself what the heck was I doing to make this happen? What could I do to make it stop?

I will not always be working with people who are grown ups. We each have our own values, and while I highly value personal evolution, many others value other stuff more highly. Work, like money and sex, can be charged with weird behaviors. As a grown up, my job, should I decide to accept it, is to do my best, without engaging in bizarre circumstances.

My job is to stay clean and separate. I do not have to buy into someone else’s crazy behavior. I get to do the best I can at each task, irrespective of the interest it holds for me. That is to satisfy me. I get to find ways to make that happen when the task is potentially annoying or ennervating.

Why do I like what I do?

I do a lot of cut and paste type projects. Audio books have turned into a blessing for me. I can look forward to those tasks, and enjoy doing them now. For example.

Sometimes, I like to play pretend, and imagine I am someone else who likes to do the task at hand. I did that last night when I was doing a deep clean in my kitchen. “Lorelei” LOVES to clean. Oh, the satisfaction “she” felt seeing the shine come up. Oh, the satisfaction “she” felt as she put things away, threw things out, dusted things up. And I ended up with a sparkly kitchen.

The old saw, “A job worth doing is worth doing well.” used to just annoy me. So squaresville, daddy-o. But, for me, a task I bother to put my hand to is worth my best effort.

I maintain my awareness of the difference between striving for excellence and perfectionism. The former uplifts me, the latter grabs me by the throat and throws me to the ground.

How have I changed from hating the work to loving what I do?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09262013