Down Under

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about Australia. That is one place I'd like to visit though. I hear it is beautiful.

In a prior blog post, I wrote about fighting for my worth at work. I fought the good fight. The result was not what I had hoped for though. Although that is the case, I am proud of myself for having the conversation. To be frank, I have a really awesome boss. Probably more awesome than I will ever have again. She gets me. She gets "it". I know that I can say almost anything to her and she will take it for what it is worth and not only listen and let me be completely honest and cry in her office, but she'll be completely honest back and also sometimes cry in her office.

I'm really thankful for that. Because even though I didn't get exactly what I wanted, I was able to be open with her and tell her how underappreciated I was feeling by the business. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a boss who will listen to that or to even have a boss you feel comfortable enough saying that to. Sometimes just being able to release those emotions to someone that matters helps.

One of the things I talked to her about today, I think relates back to the title of this blog. I know I already wrote something that relates to suffering, but this kind of fits back into it. I need to look at this as sometimes there is just suffering. Rather than I own this suffering. This suffering doesn't have to be mine. I can choose to release it now. I can choose to move on from here and take the wonderful things that were said about me today and own those. Hold onto those instead of the disappointment. I got some really great compliments,  amazing feedback, and found out that I have some really strong people in my corner that I didn't know were in my corner. I think that says a lot. I wish it said a lot more in a physical sense (what I asked for vs what I am getting), but it's something. I think it's going to take me a little while to get there, but I think that's ok too. Letting go can be hard, and I'm also not going to put pressure on myself to let go of something I'm not ready to let go of...but I know that I can choose to let go and move on when I'm ready.
And when it doesn't smart as much. (That's old timey lingo for feeling stingy).

But I think the real lesson here is the base of why I've been feeling this--which was feeling underappreciated. I had been harboring that for a very long time and it had been building for a while. I should have owned those feelings sooner. I think we can learn two things from this. People, at their core want to be appreciated. They want to feel like they matter, they want to be told they are doing a good job, because at the end of the day, everyone just wants to feel like they made a difference. They want someone to recognize that they work hard, that they give their all, and sometimes just an "I notice" makes all the difference in the world.

I read an article today, interestingly enough, that correlates to this.
One of the lines in there said "As one San Francisco university marketing professor points out, "Praise does not cost anything to give, but its benefits on employee morale are priceless."^{7 Feature Article}

What I learned today was that I needed to tell my boss what I need more of from her--and that's some recognition once in a while so that I know what I'm doing matters. The other thing that I learned is that I need to focus on doing this more with my employees. Because if I'm feeling this way, I promise at least one of them is feeling this way as well. It's easy to tell someone that they've made a mistake. It's hard to remember to take the time to tell someone they've done a wonderful job. Treat others as you'd like to be treated is the old saying. So, I'm going to work on that for my employees and I hope it will make a difference to them.