pink bottlebrush!

In the past little while I’ve been super-grumpy and curmudgeonly. I’ve attributed this mostly to the on and off drinking, but I had a bit of a revelation yesterday that my huge stockpile of positivity has been depleted by the negative jerks I’m surrounded by at SML and my attitude to them.

xxx

But lets rewind a little.

The week before last was really pretty awful.

– The ToddlerConsultants (really must get onto that post about them) are back in the building for a 5 week bleed-us-dry engagement. Truly, they’re like vampires … once you invite them in &etc. And they’ll spend a good bit of this time slagging me off and suggesting that they’d be better at my job (for 10x the fee) – mostly because I’m an old lady and they’re dynamic young go-getters with gold star education of the UK type.

– We had what I thought was a brilliant Leadership Team | Culture group workshop. During the workshop I made a very considered remark that [newbie in Comms] wouldn’t have been exposed to the extreme levels of dysfunction at SML because they didn’t have much to do with a substantial % of SML. 2 days later I received the longest, most defensive, insecure email I have ever seen from the Comms Director detailing everyone in the business his team had contact with (ironically missing the substantial % I was talking about). So had to deal with that. Bobs says I need to help InsecureNewCommsDirector understand how to interact like a human. I say fuck that, but will do it anyway. These Comms peeps are supposed to be leading our culture transformation. Dispiriting.

– Lunch with DishyExBoss. So much of the “your transformation project won’t work, I’ve seen it all before”. Yeah, thanks!

– Workshops with fighty OldSML peeps of the “we tried that 10 years ago”, “things will never change” type.

– Engagement with ExcellentBigConsultingFirm reviewing processes. I’m leading. Cathartic, but brings up So Much Stuff about what we do badly. At least the many ExcellentBigConsultingFirm consultants love me.

Exhausting.

Add to this lots of reading the news and I was brimful of GRAR and annoyance and whinging and “get off my lawn”. All of my positivity and energy and enthusiasm were really depleted. I had become one of THEM.

xxx

So what changed? Well …

I’m a big fan of the Note to Self podcast and early in the week received the usual email with deets of the new episode about mindfulness.

Of course you can imagine my reaction to the “for he’s a jolly good fellow” job title – all eye-rolling “this is the end of civilisation!”, grumpy old person, gen-X-cynical schtick.

Anyway, yesterday I was walking to work with Don and was ranting about the dickheads I had to deal with and how people were so difficult … and ToddlerConsultant and TheOaf … GRAR GRAR.

After Don and I parted company I shoved in my headphones and listened to the episode and I was really taken with the loving kindness exercise at the end.

I wish for X to be happy.

And so I tried it. I wished ToddlerConsultant to be happy. I wished TheOaf to be happy. And I felt quite a bit calmer. Actually I felt a whole lot calmer. I was radiating calm. Radiating!

Just what now?!

And so through the day I wished for all of the miserable, horrible people I have to deal with to be happy. Sure it was along the lines of “I wish X to be happy … because they are a miserable, negative dickhead who obviously has a horrible life”. Kind of like a curse, spat out with a crooked pointing witchy finger: “I wish for you to be happy!”.

Don and Heather and Vincenzo and Knut were all like “I’m pretty sure this is not exactly what they had in mind with the wishing happiness”.

But hey, I feel a WHOLE lot happier and content and whatever works.

And of course I have bought the book. Because I want more of this. It actually feels pretty great.