If you don’t like it – change it!

I love people who don’t complain.

Imagine you have accepted a new job in the company you’ve been working for years. It’s promotion for a management position, but mainly because there’s no-one else in the company who’d be able to do the job. However because of bad top management and lack of co-workers the job that starts stressing you out. You keep going for a few months – and ensure excellent quality – but the workload keeps growing and you get even more stressed. You tell about the problems you’re facing to your direct boss who talks to the owner – yet nothing changes another few months. You start having problems getting sleep and you haven’t had a free day in ages. What would you do?

I know some people who just keep talking about the problems in their lives – what they don’t like and what makes them miserable. They can even take some initiative – like talking to the boss – but that’s where they’re responsibility over their lives more or less ends. Let’s call them drifting-along-people (and the black and white approach in this one is to make the point clear).

The other type – the one I like – doesn’t complain. I guess they can also endure more pain before it’s defined as pain by them, but above that they do something themselves to change the situations that drag them down. Let’s call them I-can-people.

So back to this situation that inspired me today. The example above is from real life – and the guy who is going through this decided to call a meeting, where everyone in the company was invited as the situation is concerning more or less everyone’s daily work. Around 20 people came and he decided to discuss the situation openly. Let me quote: “I can’t go to sleep anymore without drinking. I have to get drunk every evening to be able to come to work in the morning. I don’t want to become an alcoholic. Why am I doing this? No reason is big enough. I call for changes or I’m back to the work I was doing before.” <-- which would mean a small disaster for the company

It takes some guts to first admit to yourself you might be developing a huge problem for yourself if you don’t change anything – the next level is to be able to tell the group of people about it. Simply, with straightforwardness impossible to argue and by knowing you might lose your management position as a result.

Wow, love it! We always have a choice.