3 Words to Make the Horrible Go Away

“Ugh! They are horrible and they just don’t care!”

Those were our thoughts. A friend of mine and I were spending hours complaining about our jobs.

Why didn’t we just find new jobs, you ask?

It’s complicated.

But because this went on for months, we had to develop methods to cope until one day we had a realization that was shared through text. The text went like this,

[The job] is a gift…YES! A gift! Yoga is about evenness of mind, no matter how frustrating the situation you find yourself. The practice of yoga is for the purpose of getting better at being in the moment and allowing it to simply be. [The job] is frustrating, ALL DAMN DAY! But the job is giving us the opportunity to practice being non-reactive. We have the opportunity 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to practice being in a calm state of mind, despite the foolishness.

We reflected on all the anger, disappointment and frustration we experienced the months before, all in the name of caring about the work, until we realized something else.

That was our egos!

Our egos were saying, “They are wrong and I am right,” “I know what to do. Why won’t they listen?” Our egos wanted to be validated, and called it caring about the work.

We soon learned that we could care in other ways. We could redirect our energy to projects we cared about even while we were still at that job. We learned that we needed to be our own change before we saw the change we wanted to see: a new environment!

Not long after our conversation and redirecting our energies, we found ourselves in work environments that we enjoyed much more.

We now believe that the 3 words we invoked at the moment frustration reared its head helped us to stay positive, stay productive, and practice evenness of mind.

If you find yourself in a job, or any other situation that frustrates you regularly, consider practicing evenness of mind with these three words: I AM peace.