Change The Job Or Change Yourself? Whatever You Do, Don’t Act on Impulse!

Sometimes, bigger change is in order, especially when you find yourself stressed out on job and severely lack workplace satisfaction. So, what should you change? Yourself, or the job? May be a little of both, can return peace to your life.

Those of you, who have read Tennyson’s ”Charge of the Light Brigade,” would remember the famous lines:

‘‘Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”

The stanza succinctly sums up the mindset of a suicidal charge. If you are set on ending your career, then following the mottos of ”not to make reply,” ”not to reason why,” will serve you admirably. However, if you intend to continue enjoying a fruitful work-life in all its glory, then you ‘got to make reply,’ and ‘got to reason why.’ Otherwise, most definitely you will land in soup, even if you manage to avoid the ‘valley of Death.’

First of all, take a long close look at things. Don’t confuse instinct with impulse. Acting on instinct can produce great results, but acting on impulse is called stupidity. Find the reason for your distress. Adjustment and adaptation can create positive solutions for most problems; the trick is to find what change is actually needed for successful adaptation with minimum effort. To find that, you need to inspect things properly and in their right contexts without bias.

There is a little tool called the ”Five Whys” that was reputedly popularized by Toyota in the 70’s to help in-house problem solving. The principle of applying the tool includes taking the end-result in any chain of events or action and asking ”why?” If the answer leads to another intuitive ”why,” then within a series of five consequent steps, the logical answer to the problem can be reached. Let me give you an example:

I am writing my resignation letter:
Why? Because my supervisor insulted me.
Why? Because he had the chance.
Why? Because I could not deliver my work in time.
Why? Because I was late to office.
Why? Because I missed the bus.

Conclusion: I have to make sure that I do not miss the bus and reach office in time.
You see, arranging the change in your lifestyle to reach office in time is the actual solution to the problem, while resigning from your job over an insult is impulsive action (stupidity). If you don’t give the reason, the supervisor has no chance to insult you. Also what you interpret as insult, may be ordinary social interaction for your supervisor. Every person has different social backgrounds and do not react uniformly to the same set of actions. If you are stressed over the insult, remember your supervisor may be ten times more stressed for having failed to deliver work and do his/her job.

In office environment, stop thinking of yourself as the center of the universe and that all action and reaction is specifically tailored or meant for you. Learn to take things casually, but get to the roots of problems and solve them. A stress-free workspace will be your immediate prize.