My co-worker is ruining my job and my life!
If your co-worker is more productive, why should you care?Ever say? . . . “My co-worker is more productive than me” or “Why does he get all the glory?” . . . “He is ruining my job and my life!”
Our statements and questions about work can reveal areas of stress, or insights, as to how you see yourself when we stop to listen to and think about what we are saying?
If you see your colleague getting more done do you immediately think “I’m not good enough!” and suddenly the situation escalates in your head to the point you fear you will be fired?
Or maybe the reality, as you see it, means you will have to work harder, but then the issue will be are you be paid more if you produce more? Because if not, what’s the point?
These questions can lead to feelings of stress and for some people they are quite frankly depressing.
As for your office “genius” or most “favoured” employee, just why is he or she always able to seemingly get away with things, to the extent that you feel you could almost enter them for a Teflon commercial.
To you they are not as perfect as the boss thinks they are and that is not fair.
Why work in a place where on the one hand you don’t want to be scrutinized because you feel you are not “perfect enough” and on the other hand you hate being at work where you think you are not seen and are basically invisible. So what can you do when you are unhappy at work?
Well, the old adage, we can seek to change ourselves and not others, is true. So the beginning point is ‘yourself’ and it is not a bad place to start since we spend a lot of our time in life trying to make others happy or at least satisfied. Put your thoughts down on paper on what your personality is like, list the traits you do like in yourself. Things to consider…Does your job choice match well with who you are and your interests and your traits? These are key elements to coping with what happens to us at work. It is important to clarify what we value and how we are going to bring that into our workplace. Translating that understanding into results begins in our heads.
If your co-worker is more productive, why should you care unless someone is saying it’s a problem.
Maybe you are, according to the rest of the office, the nicer person, the one who brings calm or a sense of fun to the office. Maybe your colleague is more productive, but is he or she more thorough too?
There are lots of things to dissect, but rather than focus on competing, focus on being the best version of you. This can be difficult if you are always comparing yourself to other people. What do you say to yourself when you compare yourself to your colleague? Your automatic thoughts will tell you something . . . now imagine your friend saying the same thing . . . what would you say to them? Is their answer necessarily the truth?
Are you or they not good enough? Rather than measure, pick one thing you do well and to get better, what is one thing you could stop doing or start doing? Then for the next 21 days, every day, look for a way to practice that one thing. In doing so, find joy and confidence in getting better at being comfortable being you, instead of trying to be a better version of someone else.
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