these 2 sentences have me thinking:
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I cannot change what others think about me or do, I can only change how to react to it.
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It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with.
we had a merger and my department met our new manager. He seemed empathetic and approachable, asking us to stay at our current positions and work together.
I’ve been considering a change for some time because I don’t get along with some coworkers, even though most are fine, but these 3 suck the life out of me.
So I sent this new manager an application that was rejected the next day:
“mr. X doesn’t want to consider your application.”
He didn’t even read it. He seemed so approachable and friendly… this line seems specifically written to make me feel bad, or maybe I’m very thin skinned?
An adult would accept it and move on, but I’m so thin skinned I keep ruminating about it. I want to change how I react to this and other setbacks in life, but I feel powerless.
“It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with”
I’m on the spectrum. I can hold a job, pay rent and healthcare, max my 401k…, but some of my coworkers find me robotic and rude and feel offended if I want to concentrate on my duties instead of talking to them, simply because if I don’t do my job I’ll be fired.
Not all of my coworkers are like this, but some simply don’t see that I do the same they do, except gossiping and bantering, which I find a waste of time.
They feel offended because I like to keep to myself.
It is not fair and I hate it, but it is, apparently, my problem to deal with.
Except that I don’t know how to deal with it. And I don’t want to deal with it, because it is unfair that what others think and talk about you makes your career more difficult.
I didn’t expect this post to be this long.
Exposure therapy can be quite powerful. Let yourself feel upset: don’t be ashamed that your emotions lash out. Let yourself feel, then remind yourself how things aren’t as bad as they feel. Feeling and introspecting rather than suppressing in the face of pain is emotional weight lifting.
There will be times when you lack the emotional strength to exercise, and that’s ok too. Everything in life ebbs and flows, and you can slowly make meaningful progress toward deeper happiness by taking advantage of the flows while showing yourself grace for your human imperfections when things ebb.
A major pillar of self improvement it seems we share is letting go of the expectation that everyone will like you. It’s just as likely to be someone else’s problems that lead them to not gel with you as it is to be your own problems. You have just as much a right to be imperfect as they do, but no amount of self-improvement can change other people’s problems. At any given moment, the world simply is as it is and you can only make choices to navigate the future as best as you are able.
Finding controlled ways to put yourself in a bit of emotional peril can be helpful, like creating a throwaway to try and ernestly engage in a new online community. Put that mask out there as your avatar, knowing that you can always discard it when it ceases to be useful.
At a more advanced level you might go try participating in some public in-person activity, knowing you can exit that community at any time and return to your solitude. Even if in the worst case scenario they did come to ‘hate’ you, that ceases to matter once you leave them behind. They’ll forget you long before you forget them.
Let yourself feel the despair of failure, and then let yourself see how those feelings do nothing to stop you from living and growing. In fact, growing is ultimately impossible without failure. Focus on your successes, and let your past failures be signposts of your improvement.
Of course none of this is easy, but this is a journey that spans your whole life whether you want it to or not. Every time you gather the strength to engage thoughtfully with it (as you have here!), you plant seeds that you will someday get to enjoy the fruits of.
Support structures are key; DM me if you’d ever like to engage more directly in a dialog.
Very eloquently put. Thanks for sharing your insights.