I am in the middle of negotiating a promotion at work. Being one of the longest serving members of the team with a record of having delivered results and having handled my whole process without any backup, I went in with what I felt was a good justification for a bump in my position.
Alas, the person I was talking to was yet another new face, the 7th Manager I had in nearly 2 years. The poor soul had not the least idea what my past achievements were (and probably neither what my job was) and he came up with a development plan that would allow me to get that bump.
In other words, he decided to buy some time.
I was enraged. While other less experienced colleagues had bosses who pushed for their promotion without asking them to get on any plans, or in some cases, got promoted by pulling the right strings, here I was being cast aside like a fly. Day and I night, I raged about it, insulted, hurt, depressed by this treatment that I felt was the most unfair. Talking about it would disrupt a day that had otherwise started well and I would at times wake up or go to sleep, my head buzzing with angry thoughts at the sheer injustice of it all. A life that I had promised to live in contentment was being disrupted.
Though every once in a while, another thought would pop into my head, a thought influenced by the psychologist Albert Ellis' Three Musts that he said lay behind all discontentment ie 1) I must do well 2) Everyone must be nice to me and 3) Life must be easy. He said the in reality, life was more than often likely to be difficult, unfair, and ultimately, absurd and that to expect no less was to set oneself up fo disappointment. Unfortunately, since school we are often taught to believe in the value of hard work and the beauty of meritocracy and hard work results in good results which equates to success. However in school, many of us are shielded from the lives of less fortunate students, those from broken families, those unable to pay for a daily meal or that extra tuition or those with other issues contributing to their poor grades. Plus, when we look outside, we see the countless "Inspirational" videos on Youtube where celebrities brag about how their hard work got them to where they were (would anyone say otherwise?) (really Kendall?)
Therefore, in our head, the narrative build that hard work always equates to success. Then we are thrown into the adult world, where somehow hard work does assure us a certain quality of life, but we find that to reach the zenith of corporate success, we are subject to the decisions of whimsical managers, we are judged on the likeability of our personality, the accent of our tongues, the color of our skins, our gender, age, a lot which are simply beyond our control. And because we cannot control them, we throw a tantrum like children, then grow disillusioned and bitter. Before you know it, life is almost over.
What if we saw life for what it was, difficult, unfair, absurd and made peace with it? I am of the strong disposition that life will always give you what you need, though not always what you want (that distinction is important). Somehow resetting our own expectations might make us a failure in the eyes of society but it might do our mental state a lot more good. It would free us up from burning through our weekends to get to the top of the corporate ladder to leading a life filled with learning, loving and meaning.
Not saying that extra bit of money won't help, but it is important to keep in mind that sometimes there are more important things in life.
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