Finding Ways to Stay Connected

In my career transition over the past 6 months, I have been met with many growth opportunities. Working in the corporate world, a totally new field for me, has brought about challenges that have enabled me to see areas for my own development. This whole growth thing doesn't ever end does it?

Several lessons that I have been meant to learn are the following:

• Most of the time, it is not personal.
• You are not there to meet my needs
• I am going to fail, and I may get criticized. It's not the end of the world, or my job for that matter.

I have had to confront these issues in the past but in different ways. When I worked in education, I had a fair amount of autonomy at work to create and express myself. My job as a college instructor was largely based on cultivating strong relationships with my students. 

I have always been a people person. I guess what I mean by that is, my whole life, how I performed at work, school and play has largely depended on the people in those environments and my relationships with them. My mother told me that from a young age, it would become clear to her by the end of my first week of school in a new grade, how well I would do based on my feelings about my teacher. If I liked them and felt some type of connection with them, it was going to be a good year and that would be demonstrated on my report cards. If I did not like them and I felt like I could not connect with them, it was not going to be a good year and my grades would probably suffer. So, for me, if I feel a connection to the person I am working with, that will heavily influence my performance and engagement in the work. If I do not feel connected with them, it will take a toll on me. It can affect me quite negatively.

Some examples of this are:

• I can become hyper sensitive to any form of feedback, especially if it is even remotely critical.
• I can spend a ridiculous amount of time overanalyzing every interaction with them, rather than focusing on the tasks at hand.
• I lose confidence in myself which can result in working within the lines. Not taking chances and trying something new for fear of being criticized.
• I can also become very needy in the sense of requesting feedback or simply any form of communication often, in order to get a sense of producing the 'right' work.

All of these behaviours which become side effects to feeling disconnected from my colleagues lead to a deep internal struggle. And it can become more and more difficult to find any joy in the work that I am doing. 

I have always envied those who are deeply passionate about their work separate from the people they work with. For them people (i.e. their colleagues and clients) are an external factor, that have less influence on how they do their jobs. They tend to gain a high degree of intrinsic motivation and joy from simply doing what they love. I actually find it extremely difficult to enjoy any type of work if I am unable to see the connection that it has to the people around me. Whether it is creating a document for my colleagues, or doing research for a client, the purpose of what I am doing resides in how it affects the people involved, not what exactly it is. For me, it is and always has been about the people.

In teaching, I can see how this took its toll on me but also served me well. Especially when I was in the classroom with my students. It allowed for me to engage with them easily and find ways to transfer new concepts and ideas to them based on an understanding of who they were and their learning styles. I had many challenges of course, but I was lucky to be in a position where it felt like I was able to use my predisposition of prioritizing connection with my students to my advantage.

Now that I am in the consulting world. I have had new challenges simply based on the fact that the people I work with vary from day to day. As a consultant, you work on a project by project basis with different clients over time. The coworkers that I work with also change based on the needs of the project and availability of company resources. This allows for a high degree of exposure to all kinds of people with unique personalities and subject matter expertise. Navigating all of these new relationships tends to become a preoccupation for me and I can get a bit neurotic about it, especially if I sense that something is not going well.

What I am continuously having to learn is that people have different orientations. In the corporate world, profit is important. In theory I get that, as it is important to me as well. And as a consultant, the work you create, keeps you valuable and "billable." What this means is that sometimes, my needs to connect with my client and or colleague take a back seat to the work at hand. Now I totally understand that in theory, but in reality, I tend to struggle with detaching my emotional needs from the situation.

It brings me back to the idea that we need community to be able to flourish as human beings. That old expression, "It takes a village to raise a child" comes to mind. I have had to learn the lesson over and over again that if I cannot get what I need from you, rather than becoming disheartened, anxious and/or demanding it from you over and over again, perhaps I need to simply accept that I cannot get what I need from you. That does not have to mean that I cannot get what I need, it just means that I need to get it from somewhere else. In the past, this struggle would lead to me using substances as a means of punishing those people who were not giving me what I needed while simultaneously numbing myself so that I did not have to truly deal with the part of me that was not getting her needs met. In recovery I have built coping mechanisms around this including:

• Talking to other people in recovery, and sharing with them about my struggles and asking for guidance.
• Journalling, meditating, pulling cards and trying to look inwards for a connection to myself, the universe and my intuition in order to find the answers that I need.
• Reaching out to family and friends that might have a degree of detachment from my current issue, and can give me support and insight.
• Reaching out to informal mentors who have experience in the field that I am in and might be able to offer a different perspective through their own experience.

Being in a long distance marriage, I have been in many ways forced to learn that my husband can never meet all of my needs. Also, in simply getting to know my partner, I have learned about his needs, and how they differ from mine. For example, for him, talking about our issues can feel like re-opening a wound and reminding him over and over again what is wrong and not working in a situation. For me, talking about an issue or challenge that we have overcome is an opportunity to reflect upon our successes as a couple and to revisit how we came through it together. In learning his needs, I have found other ways of meeting my own. Thankfully, I have a community that I can connect with. I have other people to whom I can talk to when I need to work something out. 

What I am being forced to learn is that sometimes I have to rewire my thinking around the roles people play in my life and my expectations of them. For example, my colleague's role is not necessarily to ensure that I feel seen, heard and connected with at all times. It is certainly not meant to be their first priority. Because this is a high need for me, I am learning to find other ways to get it met. I also have to learn that if my client does not like what I have provided them with, that does not necessarily reflect upon our relationship and how much they trust me to do good work for them. 

I cannot always work with people who have the same disposition as me, and who are highly attuned to my sensitivities. Just like, I cannot always provide that same attunement to them and their needs. It is a work in progress, rerouting my go-to behaviours, in order to find ones that better serve me and my needs which subsequently serve the needs of my colleagues and clients.

With the current COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are now working remotely and practising social distancing. I am acutely aware of how adjusting to this new normal can easily feel like an impingement on our collective need for connection. But we are finding ways to work through it and I have felt encouraged to get a little bit more creative in the process.

Reaching out to loved ones and chatting virtually helps. Connecting through video or phone. We are all in this together, and if anything, this situation has helped solidify that by emphasizing that we should be taking the necessary precautions to ensure that everyone is safe. I am grateful to be able to work remotely during this time, to have strong communication lines between family members, friends and colleagues and to be given the opportunities in life and work to develop my understanding of others and myself.

Wishing you the opportunity to connect with yourselves, your loved ones, your community and whatever it is that brings you passion and joy, while we all adjust to this new way of being in the world.