Saturday, February 8, 2014

Embracing our Frustrations



Everyone is aware of things that frustrate us in our professional lives. It may be a skill that we find particularly challenging. While my other teacher colleagues find this task easy, I often regarded this as an issue. It may also be an issue that we regard as extremely important like meeting of deadlines, while others don’t approach as enthusiastically as we might like. It may even be a difficult teacher with whom there is a strong difference of opinion that even simple chit-chat becomes a tiring task.

As an introvert, I find public speaking something not so easy – many a time frustrating. Just as I had identified this skill as my greatest frustration, I decided at the beginning of the year to find some way in which my work actually can benefit from this “often-maddening” relationship. In other words, I kept telling myself that this is “THE SKILL” that I have the most opportunity to master no matter what. And through reexamining of my SELF concept, I came to the realization “… why my other colleagues are great public speakers – they were basically themselves!” Maybe I need to just be more open and be natural when I speak to teachers. Then there is the issue of things I regarded as extremely important such that meeting of deadlines. While others may consider this as a personality conflict, I thought about its significance in terms of helping my team to work harder, think more creatively or moving out of their comfort zone.

By embracing our frustrations, I believe that it would help transform our workplace from a constant source of frustration to a beneficial environment where we continually improve. And since we cannot usually change the person or situation, the easiest thing to change is our ATTITUDE. And our attitude may well have been the problem all along.

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