Sigh. Why must we learn some lessons more than once? As I wrote almost exactly one year ago:
If we're doing work that's meaningful to us, we tend to feel caring and compassion for our colleagues and managers--and at the same time, we also feel frustrated and angry with them on a regular basis because of the professional demands that continually pull our lives out of balance.
Standard operating procedure in most organizations is to sweep those negative feelings under the rug until they get expressed in unproductive ways (at work or elsewhere.) That's clearly not helpful--but what's also lost in that process are the positive feelings we have for our colleagues and managers. Note that these oppositional feelings don't cancel each other out. The frustration and anger we might feel at our colleagues and managers is just as real as the caring and compassion we also feel for those same people. We have to hold on to, honor and express both sets of feelings, as contradictory as they might be.
Having written recently about the power of learning from mistakes, I feel some shame at having to re-learn this particular lesson. OK, third time's the charm, right?
Photo by asterl@rs. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
