The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier by Cy Wakeman

Author:Cy Wakeman [Wakeman, Cy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-04-15T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Rule #2

Suffering Is Optional, so DITCH THE DRAMA!

It was a beautiful, sunny day in Mexico, and I was getting paid to lead people on a hike through a scenic trail. As far as I was concerned, it was a perfect day. My energy was high and my mood was buoyant. Then everything changed. Looking ahead on the trail, I saw something big and sort of squiggly on the ground. A snake! I started to freak out immediately. In my head I was reviewing the snakebite first-aid procedure, wondering how I was going to get twelve hikers safely around the snake—basically panicking. For the next few minutes, the hike, and my job, became grueling and exhausting as I worried about every eventuality while forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. Until we got close enough to see that the snake was … a rope. What caused my suffering in that situation? It wasn't the rope—nothing in our reality actually changed, and we were never in danger—it was my perception, my dramatic assumption that the rope was a poisonous snake.

As humans, we regularly take ropes and make them into snakes. Especially at work. Most of you are not consciously trying to create drama, but unconsciously many of you do it all the time. When I worked as a therapist, here's how I fell into this trap: I would pull up the day's schedule of patients and think to myself, “What a packed, crazy schedule! I'll never get through it.” That schedule was nothing more than information about the reality in which I was working that day, but instead of accepting it and just saying, “Good to know,” I argued with my reality. I'd be tired before I even started.

Making ropes into snakes is very draining. If you find you are overwhelmed or stressed most of the time, you can be sure you are arguing with reality—an argument you will lose 100 percent of the time. The stress you are experiencing is not due to what is happening to you. It comes from the stories you are telling yourself about your situation.

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