Angela: Today, we dive deeper into understanding the thoughts circulating in the modern workplace and the pandemic and conflict with working at home.
Angela: What are some of the sabotaging thoughts you have been exposed to in the workplace? There’s probably a long list – so maybe the ones common to many people first.
Patti: How about thoughts of comparing your abilities to your coworker’s strengths, or wanting to control outcomes, fear of rejection, or fear of failure, and the feelings that your manager has favoritism towards a coworker over you. These thoughts can sabotage your performance at work and can overtake you with fear and overwhelm.
Angela: There is a move to having people from work from home. How does this change the way some are performing at work? What makes some people love it while others hate it?
Patti: Since working at home, some have realized how much the work environment has caused havoc to their physical and mental state and given them space to reflect on what they want in life, and it may not be this workplace or career. For some, they liked working alone; it’s non-stressful dealing with other personalities and communication styles.
Angela: When the inner thoughts about work are not working well, what are some things you can suggest to help people get clear on their thoughts to make things better?
Patti: Recite positive affirmations to eliminate any negative thoughts about work. I’m sure you have seen those funny work memes. There is one where someone is sitting at their desk repeating this affirmation. “I love my job!” over and over again.
Reciting a prayer – something like this: Dear God, please help and encourage me today to have a positive attitude towards my job, work performance, and the people I work with and have a good day at work. Thank you, AMEN!
Listen to uplifting music.
Journal how you are feeling.
Go for a walk.
Focus on work tasks.
Remember – What you want in your life and remove the thoughts of what you don’t. Set goals of how you are going to change your situation at work and put them into action.
Angela: In Australia, in lockdowns, Parents who work at home have more expectations to do everything, homeschool, parent, and work – and it’s too much. Does something have to give with the way corporations or organizations approach work? The rising stress of parents is not healthy for society.
This episode has given us a lot to think about in our relationships at work. We would love to hear your tips, strategies, or inspiring stories on building better relationships at home and work or about this podcast topic.
In this podcast episode Angela and Patti will be discussing how having balance with thoughts and feelings can improve your relationships with others at home and work.
Angela: All of us have thoughts that are not happy thoughts. We all have thoughts out of balance, not kind, not great, and better not shared. However, once you think, an idea adds to the collective thoughts of consciousness in all human beings. 48 Building Resilience with Social and Viral Media for Caring Relationships I talked about Mass Consciousness, which is the collective thoughts and emotions created, experienced, and projected by humans through all time.
Patti: Adding a little more to this about our unhappy thoughts – When we feel victimized, our thoughts and feelings become unbalanced. Working through those feelings helps to maintain balance and interactions with others. For example, looking towards the future with hope and gratitude while realizing the past was a life lesson to navigate a better tomorrow.
Angela: Patti, you do Coaching for Inspiration with Patti. You inspire people with ideas, thoughts to think differently, creatively and solution focussed. Do you find that humans are balanced in their thoughts?
Patti: Most people have a lot thrown at them throughout the day. They have not spent any time shutting off. They are overload and overwhelmed, and some are just going through the motions. Some are constantly in fear or defensive mode. So to answer the question, no.
Angela: Do you feel thoughts are inherently negative and positive, and then we have to see both negative and positive and see what emerges from the two?
Patti: Depends on the home and work environment. For example, suppose they have a stable, loving, and respectful home life (positive) and have turmoil, criticism, hostility, and lack of love or encouragement in the family unit (negative). In the work environment: Say that they feel challenged, respected. Enjoy their job, encouraged. Acknowledge, praise, and feel heard (positive). However, if the workplace lacks teamwork, it promotes aggressive competitiveness, micro-managing, harsh critiquing, pitting each other against one another, criticizing, and bickering behavior (negative).
There could be a combination of both excellent home life and horrible work life. Or an awful home life and a great work environment. Then there is both a negative home and work life or both positive home and work life. So which is the most balanced? Is it having joy in both places? Whether people realize it or not, personal and work-life run into each other daily.
Angela: What is inspiration, and how could inspiration be derived from negative and positive thoughts interacting with each other?
Inspiration is inspiring or animating action or influence, as an idea or a result of inspired activity, a thing or person that inspires you. Theology or Spiritual – A divine influence directly and immediately put upon the mind or soul. The divine quality of writing, words of a person so influenced—the act of inspiring the quality or state of being inspired.
To me, inspiration is when you feel compelled or drawn to do something and feel good about it. Someone encourages you, and you feel energized and enjoy doing it.
When something negative happens in life, reflect on that situation, you can either look at it from overwhelm, distraught, resentfulness, un-forgiveness, or anger. That’s okay; we need to go through the process of healing. However, it is not healthy for us when it consumes us for years and holds us back in life, and we can’t move on. It can make us sick and change our perspective towards others that have nothing to do with what happened. When we learn from that experience and share how we moved past it with others who are going through the same thing, we inspire them to heal from it as well. That is taking a negative and moving it to a positive interaction of thoughts and actions.
Angela: Whenever you have a thought, it could be a thought that has circulated throughout history – it could be a thought from your parents that you think is yours – but is it?
Changing the thought cycle is important if it is harmful or unkind. An Example: Say, as a child you are verbally abused; how can you stop this cycle with your children? So it doesn’t continue. Change your interaction and words towards them in a kinder way.
Parenting from the inside out, so you can understand the conflict between how you feel about how you treat your child because of how you were raised. Angela did a Facebook live on mothering and its connection to lack of self-love and hate, which looks at how we blame parents and at the same time damn ourselves to feelings of being separate from love.
Angela: A big part of my relationship healing work is to see all the unconscious and conscious negative thoughts I have had about a person, which can be some time and even years. And then I start to see how those thoughts have kept that person away from me – and actually how the person, even if I never said those words out loud – the person has felt those thoughts.
Patti: Pausing, reflecting, and asking yourself, is this helpful to me and my relationship with him. Does it need to be said? If yes, then do it; if no, then don’t.
Angela: Most of what is helpful to my relationship is specifically spontaneous in the moment and has no real basis in thought. What is fruitful to the relationship is based in feeling, sentiment, comedy and delighted at the prospect of being in my partner’s presence. And there is no thought in that space. It’s when I get specific charged up thoughts that I know to start paying attention to them to see what they are trying to make me see inside myself – and if they have something loving, helpful, fun and insightful for my partner – they will be thoughts that are not expecting anything from the person that are shared without a thought, without thinking about it – and they just sort of come out of me spontaneously.
Patti: Angela, I love this – What is fruitful to the relationship?
This episode has given us a lot to think about in our relationships, whether social media, home life, and more. We would love to hear your tips, strategies, or inspiring stories on building better relationships at home and work or about this podcast topic. If you enjoy this podcast, How about becoming a supporter? Click on the Support button in the Anchor App. Thank you so much for listening.
