Life Lesson: Buck Up.

Since mid-February my entire life has been consumed by a single work project. Early mornings, late nights, weekends, you name it. I'm not the only one burning the candle at both ends, there are multiple parties that are interacting in a way they haven't before and there's a lot that could be better about how the project is progressing. Everyone has changes to their business processing and no one is getting everything they wanted. Not everything is working and time is running out. Sound familiar? Of course it does, its called life.

Just recently I started noticing a distinct difference in the attitudes of some of my coworkers and those of external parties we were working with. Despite pulling consistent 12+ hour days my team was committed to fixing what was wrong and moving everyone forward towards a successful launch. What we got in return was a lot of misplaced frustration, even anger, and surprisingly childish behavior.

• One of the other project managers pouted during a meeting because he was told to hold his questions until the end of the meeting when we had gotten through the actual agenda. When we finished the agenda and gave him the floor, he declined referencing that we had rebuked him earlier.
• The business lead from one company flat out bad mouthed our company during a large conference call with multiple parties while we were walking them through an issue. They were on hold - not mute - so everyone heard their negative commentary. The issue turned out to be their vendor’s, by the way, not ours.
• After over an hour of trying to walk one company through fairly basic processing for their side of the equation without success, that company yelled at our high level representative and rudely requested that she not treat them like children.

Don’t get me wrong, I have had a hard time reigning in my emotions on this project. I often take things too personal and I was really sleep deprived but I vented in a professional, appropriate manner… at a bar, with drinks. Many, many drinks. And some crying, I'll admit. Less than ideal, sure, but I found ways to work through my frustration that did not involve placing blame where it didn’t belong, refusing to take responsibility for items clearly under my own control or angrily complaining about what this project was or was not.

Throw a tantrum on your own time. When you’re at work be the highly skilled professional you are and BUCK UP.

You won't always have control of the situations you find yourself in - at work especially - but you do have control of how you react to them. Acting like a spoiled brat isn’t just unprofessional and unflattering, its incredibly ineffective. Stop whining about how much you dislike the situation you're in and think of a constructive way to get to where you need to be either personally or professionally.

Its also really important to be realistic about the situation you’re in; sometimes you get dealt a crap hand and its probably better for your mental health to simply acknowledge that. You’ve still got a job to do, though, and bringing anything less than your A game isn’t going to cut it.

Next time your emotions are getting the best of you slowly count to ten or take a nip out of that secret flask you have stashed, whatever it takes to calm yourself down. Then get back to work.

Stop Focusing on What You Want and Notice What You Have

I turned thirty this year and with age comes wisdom. I’ve recently had an epiphany that I think applies to more than just myself (not that I’m not willing to share my skin care regime designed to keep me looking this age indefinitely).

For the last few years I’ve mostly been single, and by single I mean that I haven’t had a significant enough significant other to bring to consecutive family events or introduce to the inner circle of my friends outside of a screening date. Most of the time I don’t think twice about it; I’ll meet someone when its time. Sometimes, though, what I really want is a boyfriend, someone who really knows me and is there for social events and family events and hard times.

Sometimes I even have a little pity party for myself, like when I feel I have to find a date to bring to a friend’s wedding because I’m the only non-couple. But when my grandmother recently passed away I finally opened my eyes and noticed something: everything I needed was right in front of me.

There was an unbelievable amount of love and support flowing in from all directions heading directly at me. Besides my family, so many of my friends in the area made it to the wake, several sent flowers, one of them picked up a prescription I wasn’t able to grab in time and one of them even offered to take off work the day of the funeral to be my “other” for the day.

The Rolling Stones said it best: “You can’t always get what you want… [but] you just might find you get what you need.” I would have thought grieving would be easier with a boyfriend in tow, but what I needed to grieve was support, and I had plenty of that available.

Its not just about being single. A lot of my friends look to a specific individual to provide them with something, and they’re disappointed if that individual doesn’t meet their expectations.

I knew a bride who had this mental picture of the role she wanted her Maid of Honor to play in the planning of her wedding; she wanted her to be there for the dress shopping and the location scouting and for all the guest list venting. Thing is, this MOH in particular didn’t really have the skill set necessary to be a bride’s right hand gal, she hadn’t been in very many weddings, was away at college and didn’t really demonstrate the interest in girly details that one needs to provide feedback on invitations and flowers and centerpieces.

What this bride did have was two in-town bridesmaids with plenty of prior wedding know how and the willingness to make time to plan showers and address envelopes. It wasn’t what she wanted, but I believe that bride had everything she actually looking for: the support and enthusiasm of multiple bridesmaids throughout the wedding planning.

The revelation? STOP FOCUSING ON WHAT YOU WANT AND NOTICE WHAT YOU HAVE. Don’t waste your time wishing you had that special someone to share something with or being disappointed in a specific person’s behavior. Be thankful for the people you do have in your life and appreciate who they are to you.

It won’t be true all the time, but chances are what you need is already there. All you have to do is open your eyes and take it in.