Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this. I’ll delete if so. It’s also rather long. But I’m not sure how to figure out where to go from here.
There are two components to the above.
- I am bad at my job.
I am a bit too slow and am objectively the weakest link of my group of coworkers. No one has told me this, but I know it to be true. Often we will be behind with the workload and I know it’s most likely because of me. It impacts others and it makes it so people have to work extra hours on the weekend. This hurts people.
To help make up for this, I sometimes do extra work off the clock to help my coworkers. But I still feel bad about it.
I don’t want to switch careers. I make very good money at my job and don’t have any other skills. I have been doing this for several years now and cannot see myself improving any further at this point.
We are working on getting an additional employee which should help the workload. However, I will always be the weakest link and it feels bad.
- I complain/vent too much .
This isn’t acceptable, as it hurts other people. Most human beings have empathy. When I do this to people, I can tell that it makes them feel bad. And many people already have enough to worry about in their lives. What right do I have to hurt other people by making them feel bad for me?
This one at least I can work on improving. I need to be able to learn to shut my mouth and stop talking to people in these scenarios. It’s wrong to vent to others. It hurts them. You’re not supposed to do that. You’re not supposed to express yourself that way to others. You’re supposed to keep sadness and frustration inside.
But I have learned to shut my mouth in other scenarios, so there’s some hope I can learn with this one. It’s really hard because I don’t stop and think until after I’ve done it.
How do I go about dealing with this sort of thing? Thanks if you’ve taken the time to get this far. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
I think you would benefit from some talk therapy, almost everything you said is a problem of your own framing of the issues.
I don’t know what you do or why you say you are objectively the weakest link, but there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. There’s definitely something wrong with describing it as being hurtful to your other team members. When I click this thread I thought it was going to be about someone who couldn’t stop being violent towards others. Maybe you are making some other people slightly uncomfortable at times, but work is uncomfortable. That’s why they have to pay you for it. That’s why you don’t just do it for free. Your co-workers are being paid. Part of what any team member it gets compensated for is picking up the extra robe as needed to contribute to the overall success of the team. It sounds like you’re doing that too, as you described picking up extra work from time to time during your own time.
I would also suggest that the things you say are making you feel bad about this are not actually the things that you are feeling bad about. Like, you’re not really feeling bad about not getting as much work done, you’re feeling bad about how you think your team feels about you not doing as much work.
The most likely scenario is that your teammates like you, they are glad you are part of the team, and more or less. Less they are fine with picking up a little extra slack because it is the overall team performance that matters, not one individual.
I think you can work on improving everything you mentioned, not just the bit about complaining too often. Like even just the idea that you have only one skill and cannot do something else. I bet that is completely bullshit. You should keep a list like in your phone or something and every time you think of something else that you could do to earn any money at all, write it down on your list. In a year or two you will have 20 other things And anytime you’re feeling shitty about what you’re doing, you can pull out that list and remind yourself that there’s 20 other things you can do to feed yourself.
I think one concept that may resonate with you is the idea of a limited mind versus an unlimited mind.
The limited mind treats the result of hard work as spending something down, something you need to rest and regain after. It focuses on the discomfort of the work, not the comforts of the reward. So like if you catch your mind negatively dwelling on issues at work, flip it around and instead force your brain to think about why you are working? For example, instead of thinking, oh crap, I have to work late this night and I’d rather go home and spend some time on my hobby, try reframing it like, if I spend a little bit more time working tonight, I will clear some things off my desk that have been worrying me and tomorrow when I pursue my hobby I will be able to really enjoy it without having to worry about these work tasks. This kind of reframing is hard and effortful at first, but it gets easier and becomes second nature. Eventually your mind does this automatically.
My mom was a complainer with a limited mind, and I grew up thinking that the reward for hard work was a period of rest. Is much more helpful to think of the reward for hard work as both comfort in other things, and momentum, that hard work makes additional hard work easier. And I’m talking about like relatively short blocks of highly productive, focused time, talking like maybe an hour to start, And knowing that the maximum amount of time anyone can really sustain high intensity focused work is about five hours.
Finally, you should not complain to others. Think of this in terms of emotions. Someone who is complaining, is trying to get other people to mirror their own emotion about something. The next time you feel like complaining about something, try going and just looking in an actual mirror for like 30 seconds and taking some deep breaths. This will help you your mind remind itself that your emotions are your own. Bonus points for standing up tall. Raising your arms up in the air and bearing your teeth like an angry monkey. This will help remind your brain that you are not a scared puppy dog, but actually a large, apex predator, capable of exerting enormous ferocity.
No, you are not supposed to hold emotion in and bottle them up. You are supposed to release emotions in helpful ways. And this also takes effort. My go-to’s are exercise, laughing, crying, And screaming as loud as I possibly can, into a pillow if there are people around, or in my home if I am alone. Like if something happens and you get the feeling like you just want to cry, you should go cry. Cry as hard as you can. Let as much of it out as possible so you don’t have to carry as much around with you.
Another tip in this vein is to compartmentalize your time and emotions. If something bad happens, tell yourself, I’m going to take a couple of hours and feel shitty and angry about this, and then I’m going to do x y and z to repair the situation. And after those couple of hours, you have to tell yourself that it’s no longer time to feel shitty and angry about it, it’s time to let it go and move forward. And don’t be afraid to give commands to your brain, tell your brain what you want it to do. It will listen. Good luck friend.