108: Suffering at Work is Optional

What if I told you there's 2 ways to go through work each day? Joy or misery, your choice. Welcome back to the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, CEO of Reality-Based Leadership. And in this podcast, every single episode, we're looking for ways to help you ditch the drama, Build alignment in your teams and call those you lead to greatness. And so that's what we explore on this podcast is where we can get stuck and get away from our best work and get away from our most engaged teams, teams that are accountable and innovative and delivering on what we need. And how do we bring people back to that through our leadership? And so if that's what you're looking for, you're in the right place. And we got another really cool one for you today. So this episode really goes at a key principle, a core principle, foundational principle of reality-based leadership. That is this: suffering at work is optional and so often self-imposed. And I was first taught this by a mentor of mine that said, Alex, there is always 2 ways to go through your schedule and what it could be colorful on that calendar. It could be completely full. And as you look at that, most of us don't realize that you can go through that with joy, or at least neutrality, or at least adding a big contribution and leaning into everything, or misery. And I can't tell you how often, and it even happened this Sunday because I have a big day of recording. We got some meetings coming up on Tuesday as well, that I opened that up on Sunday and I literally was having a good time with the kids. Like we are, racing cars down the driveway. We got the bounce house set up and I just flashed my schedule almost on accident and I saw all the color come up for the next week and I went, oh my gosh, crap, must suffer. Like, I, it wasn't even an option to like not attach to that and just say, oh, look at those colors on the screen. That's in the future. I don't have to worry about that. Let me stay in the moment with my kids and enjoy the sunshine and this bounce house and And all the screams and the laughter, I go right into mandatory suffering. And I find that so fascinating because many of us do get the Sunday scaries and we're like looking ahead and it's a big week and it, it doesn't mean you can't get excited about it. And there's things that, you know, we're looking ahead to that, that's there, but the suffering on top of it that I felt, which is visceral, like you, I felt it here and kind of up here. In that moment, that's something to get thoughtful about, to get intentional on. And so that idea always fascinates me, but I often say there's these like 3 types of suffering that almost has become just default in workplaces for sure. And I find them fascinating. So I call them pre-suffering, post-suffering, and then mandatory group suffering. So let's start with pre-suffering. So it's like, oh my gosh, all is going good now. But we got that meeting at 1 with that one leader that always does X, Y, or Z. So it's like 8:00 AM and we're good. And you got some inspiration, you got some clarity, you're ready to do some great things in the morning. And then you look ahead, you see that meeting on the calendar automatically. It's like, must suffer. And so one of my best pieces of advice for pre-suffering is to just not worry about it. And then about 2 minutes before the meeting, just pop into the bathroom. And I like to have a little bit of a cry. And then after that 2 minutes, you just go in there and have the meeting and you saved yourself about, I'm bad at math, like 4 hours and 58 minutes of non-suffering. But so many of us pre-suffer those meetings. And then there's post-suffering. And this one is fascinating because if you're not careful, your team's just in a perpetual state of like going back in the past and all of the battles we won and all of the resilience we had to use. And you're like, all's going perfect now. And we're actually good. We kind of have the staffing we need. We feel clear on goals and we feel like we know our contribution and we're really energized for some reason and feeling like we are able to absolutely contribute to the mission here. And someone goes, well, yeah, except do you remember last Thursday when the system went down and we had to scramble and we had to transfer things, you know, from paper back onto the system? And it was like, now we're into post-suffering. Like we were just good. Now we're post-suffering last Thursday, but we're already through it. And then the last one is so fascinating. I call it mandatory group suffering. And I remember sometimes with the team I was on, I'd walk in and we got stuff to do and we got priorities and we know everything's not perfect. We got some, some things to knock out and I got a smile on my face. And I had this team member once that goes, Alex, what are you smiling for? I'm like, well, I don't know. I'm ready to have a good day. Like, I know we got some stuff to take care of, but, uh, What's going on? Well, evidently you didn't read the last email update. It's like, why don't you come over here, bring your popcorn. Let's all sit down and we're going to group suffer this thing mandatory. And there's this, this just pattern to watch for in your teams. If it's this chronic sway of suffering to, to, to keep in mind and get more intentional on. If you go deep, I find it so fascinating. It is just this jump from like reality To the story you make up about reality that causes the suffering. And I often say your stress isn't from reality. It's from the story you make up. And the key thing here that most people miss and believe about reality. I often say like, one, what do you know for sure? That question can change everything without changing anything. And what that means is it's that unhook from what what happened to the story our, it's our ego says about it. It's the judgments, the assignments of motive, the playing out the future, what it really means. And that disconnect is so key. If you can, what do you know for sure? That keeps the gap. And I want to give you an example of how many times this has happened to me of this, the suffering, this added on from what happens to the suffering. And one that was Really memorable is, takes a little bit of a backstory for us to get to the experience, but I had this time probably about 7, 8 years ago now that we were so excited. Uh, my wife and I bought our first, you know, car and it was like the moment my wife saw it, it was like love at first sight. It was one of those, we were driving down and she saw it and she was like, what was that? And we just knew that was the type of car and color we wanted. And so we worked, we saved, we got this thing. So we have it for a year or so, and I go in to take it, you know, at the time for its oil change and comes out with the report, the mechanic or the team. And they go, so all looked good with the oil, but we found something in the engine. And I'm like, you found something? Like the car's basically, you know, you know, fairly new. We, you know, and they're like, we found something. And they're like, I'm like, what is it? And they go, well, we found a rat's nest with babies in there. And they were kind of chewing on some of the wires in there. So we had to get the rat's nest out and this thing became, you know, a whole deal. I'm like, a rat's nest? And so this is like, whoa, you know? And, and so they get it figured out. There's the story. We come back. So then my dad comes down and whenever my dad comes down, like, he's one of those guys, love him so much, but we gotta do projects. Like we're either painting my kids' like bicycle we just bought at the thrift store. We are, we're, you know, we're taking, we're trying to go fishing or something, or we're working on something. And this was the perfect thing. It's like we have possible rats in the garage and we got to make sure they don't get back in the car. So we get this whole thing set up. We catch a couple of them. You never know how many there are for some of you that have been through this. And so we think we got it figured out. And I think a year goes by and I've forgotten about the rats. I'm back in the garage and I am up on this little area where we have some storage, but I'm getting this pump and I'm trying to pump up a basketball. And all of a sudden, as I move it, this thing comes down and hits me in the head. And it's kind of hairy and it's kind of dark and it goes down on the ground and I see it just roll under the car, like take off running. And I immediately go, oh my gosh, the rats are back. And I am freaking out. We got the nest back. There's probably 100 babies in our engine. All the wires are gone and I am losing it. I start to like be like, Ana, the rats are back. I'm yelling in the garage. There's chaos. And so I get down and I want to survey the situation and figure out what I got to do to get this rat. And so I'm grabbing, I think I got a wooden baseball bat in there. Like I'm figuring out what I got to do here. And I get down into pushup position. I look and it wasn't a rat at all. It was this old piece of athletic tape. Who knows why it's up there? That was like kind of dirty from like, you know, the dust and rolling on the floor, sitting there basically smiling at me. And the question here, I think, is what caused my suffering? The tape or all of my thoughts and story about the tape? See, my stress, my suffering wasn't from the reality, a ball of athletic tape that rolled under my car. It was from the story and the chaos I believed about reality. Now, some of you that don't like, you know, rats, or you don't like that. There's a little bit of like the adrenaline, the biological effect of like a thing with claws, like on your head. Like I get that suffering. But when you really look at that, I just never forget that, that it was like, how much are we turning tape into a rat infestation in my case? So what am I talking about here? You can look at life, but I definitely like to look at the workplace here. How often does your team turn a simple request That we're going to introduce a new workflow, or we're going to look at this process and see if it still serves us, or we are bringing in a new software that's going to help us have more transparency. And it's going to have us have one point of truth. And that's the decision. Think of that as like one sentence over here. Do their minds go like, wow, thanks for letting us know about an update. I appreciate you thinking about transparency and standardization. I can't wait for more. Is that where your mind or your team's mind goes? If you're human, like me, we take that one event, that one sentence. And I often make a joke, like, what if that sentence came to you? We're going to add a new, we're going to update our software. Let's say it came in Chinese and you didn't speak Chinese. You would just like continue on with your day. There's no suffering there because you don't even know what was said because you don't understand the language. That same thing I like to think about is look how quick, like we're going to update the software. And let's say it was someone on your team that built that old legacy program. It was like their baby. Well, now we've triggered this whole story. Like, I don't add value. They're trying to, you know, get rid of me. They know I should have changed it before. This is all just trying to replace me. Boom comes that story. See, the suffering isn't from the announcement. It's from the story that we make up and believe about the announcement. And I swear, one of my favorite tools, which I'll give you now, I'm getting ahead of myself because you guys get me fired up, is just drawing a line down a piece of paper like this. And it's just like, I call it, this means that. And just doing this exercise with your team, this means that you'll see that you put, we're bringing in a new software. And then you just hear either what your mind, What comes to your mind, what you're believing, or what others are saying. It's like, oh, I know what this is really about. And this is all an elaborate scheme to cut headcount. And this is trying to make it so they can survey us and they're watching every single one of our calls. And, and it's going to be really able to see like who's doing what. And, and this is all a big elaborate scheme to change and restructure. And next thing you know, we're out of jobs and we're all on the side of the road with shopping carts. And it's like, all that happened was an announcement, one sentence. And then look at the story we made up without question, which is where I love, is it true? What do you know for sure? As I mentioned earlier, is one question, like, what do you know for sure gives you that space to not believe that first story that hits you? Because if it caused stress, you feel it here, here, here. It's, it's 100%. I would say 100% at this point, it's not true. Like the universe is always more friendly than your reality when you're into that tape, into rat infestation mind. The reality is always softer than it appears. And so going through this, you can slow it down and you can go with your teams and say, well, do we know that to be true? That this officially means that they're restructuring everything? We can't. So we have to start crossing out. And some might stay, our feelings, our fear might stay, but this tool starts to look like this. And a lot of times, most of what we're suffering about, we're stressed about, we're upset about never even happened. It was the story we made up. And so what I often say is teams, when it comes to suffering at work, it's a big game of energy management. We're energy managers and we're competing against, if you're thinking about competition, those that we are trying to serve the same customers, we're competing on energy management, but it's on drama. And so if we can be the team that is intentional about this, not jumping to those conclusions and spiraling out of control, we will be the most able to help team that's out there. We will receive calls in stressful times. We'll handle supply chain issues. We'll handle some of the same challenges without excuses if we're able to be the ones that are more in reality without operating out of suffering. And so it doesn't mean that challenges aren't going to be there. Sometimes on this side, there's still problems to take care of. There's still not a great situation, but it's clear. And now we can move forward. And so in this episode, I think it's just looking at this key principle is that suffering is optional and often self-imposed. You see it here. You heard it in my story. And I encourage you to notice just in your meetings and a lot of groups I work with, there's all these in keynotes and workshops. And many of you, you might see this as like, I need the action plan. Like what's the linkage grid? Like what is my team going to do tomorrow that's different? And a lot of groups don't love my assignment is like, I want your teams to just notice, just notice where we go from the facts into the suffering and believing the story without question. Just notice that trigger. And you even sit back in your meetings, your calls, your one-on-ones, and just notice that jump, that, that lack of awareness of the jump into suffering. Notice where we're pre-suffering. Notice where you're coaching a lot on post-suffering. You're like, why are we back to what happened a year ago? That scar tissue. And I know some of that needs to be addressed if it was a big situation, but most times it's, it's like, instead of being in silence and thinking about strategy and maybe thinking about who we can develop next, we just get back into what happened last Thursday that's already taken care of. And these are things to watch. And so if this resonated with you, uh, and you're noticing that there's some suffering that could be so optional in your teams. Share this with them. Um, have a conversation, look for those times that you're turning tape into rats, so to speak, and have a laugh about it. And I think that'll really help your group be able to catch this first big source of drama and be able to stay more neutral, more clear, and to make better decisions and move into next right action more intentionally. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you had some fun. And hearing about my suffering. Not that that's kind of a weird thing to say, but hopefully it got you thinking about this mechanism that happens in our minds. Please subscribe and give a review for the podcast if you can. It helps a ton to help other people find it. I'm really loving this journey with all of you and keep doing the hard things that you're doing in leadership. We need leaders that don't run away from unpreferred realities right now. I want you to stay in there, hold space, love people up, but most importantly, Don't forget to call people up to greatness, 'cause they're ready for it. I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.