Negativity Breeds Negativity

I had some thoughts the other day, that although I was in quite a challenging situation, I think that my perspective at the time didn't help me, and potentially made it a little bit worse!

With some of the things that have occurred at work lately, which I've certainly posted about a few times, one of the definite things that has occurred for me is the substantial increase in my stress levels that quite frankly hasn't happened to me very much in my professional life.

With that increased amount of stress, comes what one might expect: negativity. I was feeling more negative about myself and my performance at work and it was sadly not because I was doing a bad job per-se but I wasn't exactly doing the job that was asked of me, I was doing a few people's jobs and that led to my main role suffering and me having to unravel the ensuing situation.

One of the things that I recently realized is that in some of those situations where I get incredibly stressed out and frustrated is that I tend to start having some pretty negative thoughts that I'm not good at my job, I'm going to make these things fail, I'm going to get fired and the list goes on. These thoughts are hopefully not true but it's a result of a substantial amount of pressure on me to turn things around and as well not end with a pretty significant financial loss for the company, short or long-term realized.

These are all situations that I quite frankly have never had to encounter before on the professional front and it's challenging to say the least. What I have found some solace in though is what I think my ability to always try and find a solution to the problem is and working towards getting that solution to be implemented in one way or another.

What I'm referring to in this situation here is my unfortunate focus on negative thoughts! When I am thinking that I am doing a shitty job as a project manager and that I'm overwhelmed, trying to always put out fires and fix everyone else's problems I had to take a step back and take in a few deep breaths. It's not perfect but I know that I've got quite a bit of knowledge in my area of professional expertise, which my leaders thankfully understand and appreciate, so that I can certainly work towards correcting the situations that I am in if I can get my head in the right direction.

The other crucial aspect for me is that I have started to engage my colleagues and enlist people that are supposed to be doing the tasks that I was doing, so that things can work as they are supposed to and far more efficiently. We each get paid to do the things that we specifically were hired for and likely specialize in. I was trying to do more than one person's job and that led to quite a few challenges! Thankfully since I started to delegate to others the way a project manager should be doing, things have quite a bit improved on that front. Not perfect yet but certainly improved.

The process of getting one's head in the right direction though, is one that is quite daunting but is definitely possible. Since I realized that the core problem I was having once the most immediate stresses of things going sideways had subsided, I then understood that my incredibly negative attitude was a self-fulfilling prophecy in that I was never going to be able to fix the situation that I was in professionally if I didn't get my head out of my ass mentally.

Granted I am still in a problematic situation but I am working feverishly and hopefully diligently to get things corrected and put back onto the right path forward so that I can feel better about my job and my position in the company. I don't have immediate fears that it will be eliminated due to poor performance but it's definitely a situation that was derived from some unfortunate mistakes that I made. I think the first step to correcting a problem is certainly recognizing what the problem likely is, so with any luck and definitely a fair amount of persistence, I can get back on the straight and arrow.

This isn't just for me, though it largely is for me, but it is for my customers because I've been in their shoes and can definitely feel for them and the challenging situation that I've put them in. I would like to think this is a strength of mine, being in different shoes and knowing what it's like to be on the other side of something so that we can work towards making it better.

One of the really great things about Hive and having a blogging space, even if nobody reads nor cares about half or more of the things I say, is that it provides an opportunity for me to mentally think through something like this and digest it in a way so that I can hopefully come out on the other side in a better spot. If you read this, thank you for entertaining my mental vomit! :D