Don’t be a Workplace Crab!
Filed under: Happiness, Happiness Tips, In the workplace, Relationships
For part 1 of this post, see: Don’t Let the Crabs Pull You Down!
Crabs in the workplace are sometimes harder to avoid than personal connections. At home, you can ignore the phone, or say No to invitations. But at work, they sit right next to you, or you have to work with them every day! No matter the place, crabs will always seek to pull you down to the bottom of the bucket where they live. Beware!
Who are the workplace crabs? Here are some ways to spot them in the wild:
- They often call themselves “realists**” but then spend all their time whining about… well, much of everything.
- They are often unwilling or unable to do the work required to get to the next level, but will blame others at every turn for denying them the opportunity.
- They don’t like to see others succeed, and will often create or support gossip that implies success was unearned.
- They often mock those who take risks, creating discomfort for those who stretch and take on extra assignments or apply for promotional opportunities.
- They studiously avoid change, even when that change will benefit them.
And please know that I acknowledge change can be very uncomfortable. However, it’s one thing to avoid it yourself – that’s your own issue. Crabs are those who try to guilt others into joining them in non-compliance or resistance.
** Note: I make a distinction between Optimists (those who look for the good and *usually* expect things to go well), and Pessimists (those who look for the worst and *usually* expect things to go wrong). Realists, as far as I’m concerned, will hold a balanced point of view, for in reality some things go well and some things don’t. When someone says they’re a Realist but then acts like a Pessimist, then I say: “If it quacks like a duck….”
An effective leader does not behave like a crab, at any time and in any venue. Moreover, most good leaders have little tolerance for crabs, as they have a toxic effect on the workplace team. Still, crabs exist, for they often do their work under the sand, where they are not visible but they still undermine morale in the workplace.
ACTION ITEM: Pay attention to your language: How do you speak in the workplace? Do you blame others for your troubles? Do you refuse to try anything new? Do you mock people who are willing to step up and try something new, or take on a new challenge? Be careful… you may be a crab!
Remember, Leadership is not about a title: Anyone can be a leader who seeks to lift others up, not drag them down!
Don’t Let the Crabs Pull You Down!
Filed under: Happiness Tips, Practicing Happiness, Relationships
A most fascinating thing occurred during a keynote talk last week, which inspired this month’s newsletter topic.
My subject was Happiness (of course!) and during my talk I was marginally aware of the fact that a woman at the table just to my right – and in the front row – kept muttering and making a gagging noise during the talk. She was being “just” loud enough to carry across the table to her coworkers, but not so loud that the company president – who sat on the other side of the room – could hear. Since I’m used to speaking while people are eating or dishes are being cleared, her behavior did not affect me; I was simply aware it was going on.
Near the end of the talk I had everyone in the room stand up for a quick mind-body exercise. I’ve done this hundreds of times, and it’s a lot of fun. The “gagger” – as I’d now named her in my head – created a tiny “scene” at her table when she refused to stand or participate. Again, I’ve had that happen before. But what happened next was what fascinated me.
As I continued my talk, I stood up on a chair, so the drama at the front table unfolded right in front of me. First, the gagger, who was nearly purple in her face (Anger? Embarrassment?) nearly crawled up the arm of the woman next to her until she convinced her to sit back down. Then she did the same with the woman on her left. So now, as the activity commenced, there were three sitting and five standing at the table.
I focused on the larger audience, so I don’t know exactly what happened during the exercise. But as I finished and looked to my right, two more people had been convinced to sit down, one remained standing but looking intensely uncomfortable… and the other two who were standing had moved several paces away from the table and were focused on me.
After the talk, many people came up to apologize for what happened. I just chuckled and reminded them of a two key points from the talk: one, you can’t change other people, only yourself; and two, happiness is a decision. And clearly, that is a decision the gagger is not ready to make!
Like Crabs in a Bucket
Every summer when we go to the beach, we go crabbing at least once on the marsh side of the island, armed with string and some bait. As we net our catch, we toss them into a bucket. Once we catch a dozen or more crabs, they create enough mass in the bottom that any one of them could easily climb out on the backs of their fellow crabs.
But we’ve never had a crab escape. Why? Because every time a crab reaches to grab the rim of the bucket and achieve freedom, all the other crabs swarm that one and haul it back down. It’s as if they’re saying, “Hey, if I’m stuck here, I’m gonna make sure you’re stuck, too!”
After awhile, even the most ambitious crabs stop trying and lay down with the others. They all die together.
How Do You Recognize a Crab in Your World?
Crabs usually reveal themselves through their language. Sometimes their actions are physical (like the crabs in the bucket) but most often they are more subtle, pulling you or others down with the weight of words:
You’ll never get into that school.
Forget it; you don’t have that much talent.
You could never do that.
No one will want to hire you!
They won’t listen to you. They won’t give you a chance.
Why even bother? The system is fixed anyway.
That’s so stupid/they’re idiots.
There’s no way you can afford that.
Who do you think you are anyway? So, you think you’re better than us?
You’re not smart enough.
You’re not pretty enough.
You’re not skinny enough.
You’re not good enough.
None of these statements have truth – they are just assessments someone else is using on you. Crabs, remember, cannot tolerate having others move up in the world… so they do what they can to keep you down in the muck where they live.
The real sadness is when you hear something so often that you start to believe it is true. It is not true, but it will become true if you let the crabs pull you down!
6 Tips for Dealing with Crabs In Your Life
- Don’t listen to the crabs. You might hear them out, but don’t let what they say become your Truth.
- Look for another point of view. When a crab speaks of your situation or the world in only negative, hopeless terms, remember that there are ALWAYS multiple, equally valid perspectives, and you get to choose one for yourself. Example: when a crab grouses about every grey day, you can remind yourself that clouds carry water, and water is life!
- Deny their self-appointed Superpowers. When a crab makes a statement that implies they know what “everyone thinks,” or what others feel, say to yourself: “No, actually — you don’t know!”
- Turn it around. For every Yin there is a Yang, and one way to manage a crab is to turn around their statement and make it about them (well, at least in your head – you don’t need to create an argument, you only need to resist letting what they say pull you down).
- Yes, And… what they say. You let the crab “be right” in what they say, then build on it in a different direction. If they say, “you’ll never get that job” then say, “maybe so, and I know the right job is still waiting for me.”
- Practice confidence and stability. It’s a lot easier for a crab to impact someone who’s already fearful and worried. That’s why it’s super important to practice being in a confident, positive emotional space. Stand tall with your shoulders back, ground your feet, and breathe deeply. When you practice that daily, you’ll feel more solid and you’ll be less susceptible to the influence of crabs.
When you regularly practice any/all of the above you may find that, after awhile, the crabs stop bothering you because they no longer get a reaction!
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The 13 Principles of Happiness, when practiced regularly, can inoculate you against the power of crabs. Visit http://www.theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/happiness/philosophies.cfm, to download a colorful 1-page PDF Poster. Post it on your workplace wall or your fridge at home, and try to live principle each day!
13 Scary Stories About Happiness, Part 2
Happiness frightens some people more than giant spiders. In honor of Halloween, I’ve assembled a list of stories people tell when they try to resist the conversation about Happiness. As you’ll see, while these myths can feel as scary as any monster, in the end they are only as “real” as vampires and zombies.
13 Scary Stories About Happiness, Continued
7. Fiction: I’m not ready to be happy yet. I’m poor. Unemployed. Sick. I can’t be happy until…I get out of school, get married, get divorced, have kids, the kids move out, I get a promotion, I get a job, I lose weight, etc, etc.
Fact: No matter what your circumstances, you can experience moments of happiness and contentment if (the big IF) you give yourself permission. Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier reminds us, “Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable.” Don’t make your happiness conditional based on some future event occurring…what if you never get there? The trick, you see, is to enjoy the journey itself.
8. Fiction: I don’t “do” emotional. It’s not macho. I’m not a touchy-feely person.
Fact: This is the biggest myth of all. You’re human, and as such you are always in some emotional state (even calm and numb are emotions!). Your comfort with emotions may be affected by your gender, cultural and family background, and context (e.g. work or home). When you pay attention to your emotions, you gain more control over them, which helps you grow stronger in your own life and in your relationships.
9. Fiction: My life has been full of suffering. It’s too late for me to be happy.
Fact: Lifelong cigarette smokers who quit soon learn that their body can heal. Just as it’s never too late to quit smoking, it’s never too late to practice living in a positive emotional state. Start small, with a daily gratitude practice to rebuild your emotional muscles. In a short time you’ll be amazed at how much lost ground you can make up.
10. Fiction: I don’t know how (to be happy).
Fact: Of course you do – it’s part of the human software. Even little babies know how to experience quiet contentment, happiness, joy, and curiosity. Still, if you’ve not used that program in awhile, it may be in storage at the back of your brain. Activate it, and the first thing you’ll notice is a suggestion to stand taller, breathe deeply and on purpose, and smile with intention. Fake it… your system will remember the rest.
11. Fiction: It’s disrespectful to be happy when so much unhappiness exists in the world.
Fact: The worldview offered by the media is a hyper-narrow window on the evil, catastrophe, and breakdowns that affect a relatively small percentage of us. Outside of active war zones, the vast majority of people – regardless of circumstances – claim to be happy most of the time. To shift your own worldview, Google “good news” or subscribe to http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/, where the daily headlines will warm your heart.
12. Fiction: I want more from life; if I’m happy, I’ll stop trying.
Fact: Happiness is not an emotion that demands exclusivity. You can be happy (wanting what you have) and simultaneously feel ambition and desire for a better future.
13. Fiction: Smiling hurts my face. Yes, I’ve actually had people say this to me. Could it be true?
Fact: An old urban legend claims that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. While this makes a great story, we don’t know for sure. See http://www.snopes.com/science/smile.asp for a serious analysis of this claim.
What we DO know is that human beings serve as mirrors to each other’s emotions. We return smiles without realizing it, and we automatically downshift our mood when we encounter someone who is sad or upset. Even a baby, shown a picture of a smiling face or a frowning face, will eventually shift mood to match the face.
We also know that we can shift our OWN mood by changing what we wear on our face. So frankly, even if smiling really DOES make your face hurt, try it anyway. I promise that within a few minutes your heart and the rest of your body will feel lighter and your pain will diminish!
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The 13 Principles of Happiness can help you overcome some of these scary stories. Check them out at http://www.theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/happiness/philosophies.cfm, where you can also download a colorful 1-page PDF Poster. Post it on your workplace wall or your fridge at home, and notice how often it comes in handy for coaching yourself or others to Choose Happiness.
13 Scary Stories About Happiness, Part 1
Each year on October 31, Americans celebrate Halloween by dressing in costumes, exchanging candy and, most of all, scaring each other. The usual candidates for fright include Ghosts, Monsters, Zombies, crawly things, and Vampires.
Believe it or not, Happiness frightens some people more than giant spiders. In honor of Halloween, I’ve assembled a list of stories people tell when they try to resist the conversation about Happiness. As you’ll see, while these myths can feel as scary as any monster, in the end they are only as “real” as vampires and zombies.
13 Scary Stories About Happiness
1. Fiction: I’m too stressed, I’m too busy, and I have too many things going on in my life to be happy. It’s too much work to be happy, and I don’t have time or the energy.
Fact: Yes, living in more positive emotional states can take some work. The paradox, of course, is that when you carve out some time for happy-making pursuits, your burdens feel lighter, even if they don’t go away. You see, happier people don’t have less work or problems in their life, but they are more resilient and are able to handle more stressful events before they reach their limit.
2. Fiction: I can’t. He/She/They won’t let me be happy.
Fact: YOU have the final decision about your happiness. As Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, wrote, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” Frankl reminds us that even if we are completely under another’s control, we still own our mind and have the power to choose our attitude.
3. Fiction: It doesn’t belong in the business world. Many people fear that talking about emotions – their own or their employees’ – is not a “real” business concern.
Fact: That mindset is SO last Millennium! It’s now been 11 years since the Gallup organization, in their groundbreaking book, First, Break All The Rules, presented irrefutable evidence that engaged (a politically-correct code word for Happy) employees are more productive, have better tenure and attendance, and contribute more to organizational success than their DISengaged (aka UNhappy) coworkers.
Numerous other workplace studies have proven that those who report feeling happier at work are more creative, healthier, and actually have fewer on-the-job accidents and make fewer errors. And all that profit-making behavior is very important to business!
4. Fiction: People will mock me and call me names, like Pollyanna. They will say my attitude is unrealistic.
Fact: The stereotype of Pollyanna (a book and movie character) gets applied to people who others assess as “unrealistically optimistic.” Most people forget that at the end of the story, Pollyanna proved that your expectations tend to create your outcomes. A line from the book reads, “When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will” and of course the opposite, as well. So, why NOT have positive expectations? Even if you are occasionally wrong, the journey’s a lot more fun.
5. Fiction: It won’t last (so why bother?).
Fact: This one is true — Happiness won’t last. But then, neither will sadness, anger, fear, or any other normal emotion. Happiness is a great place to visit, and I hope you get there often. Yet every emotion has a purpose, and you want to visit those emotions when they will serve you better. (Tip: try to visit Happiness daily, to keep in practice!)
6. Fiction: My enemies (or boss, or rivals) will think I’m weak. I’ll get hurt.
Fact: The emotional family to which Happiness belongs is a very grounded and solid one. Active practice of the positive emotions like joy, confidence, forgiveness, hope, enthusiasm, ambition, and gratitude actually make you incredibly strong.
Mood and Language: which comes first?
In a recent coaching teleclass a participant asked, “is it our mood that creates our language, or is it the words and stories we use that create our mood?” She was looking for a neat and crisp definition of how people work.
It ain’t that simple. Figuring out how people work is like solving the Chicken or Egg puzzle – which came first?
The answer to the above question is not either/or; it’s Yes. Both.
Our head (and our language and stories) and our heart (our emotions/reactions) and our physical self (behavior, non-verbals) are inextricably connected – each affects the other two.
The mood or emotion we’re in affects our behavior and it influences what we say and what we think. Our thoughts/language lead to the emotion we’re in and also affect our behavior. And of course our behavior leads to consequences that subsequently influence our reactions and stories.
A recent comic strip illustrated this principle beautifully. It’s called Non Sequitur (distributedby Universal Press Syndicate). Some context is important. The main character, Danae, is a very wise 10-year old girl who wears a black T-shirt emblazoned with a skull, and she is always in a foul mood, believing that everything wrong in the world is the fault of a conspiracy spawned by “booger-brained boys.”
- Frame 1: Danae stands with a smile on her face and thinks: “I’m in a good mood today… I wonder why?”
- Frame 2: “Hmmph… oh, well” she says out loud, and she skips merrily down the street, passing Timmy, a boy who lives nearby. He turns around and says, “Geez, why’re you in such a foul mood?”
- Frame 3: Startled, Danae asks, “what?” “you said ‘hmmph’…” “So?” “It sounds cranky” “does not” “If you say so…”
- Frame 4: “Hey, I was in a GOOD mood!” “Ahh.. ‘was’… past tense…” he says, turning away. “No… I AM IN A GOOD MOOD!!” “Then why are you shouting??”
- Frame 5: “’CUZ NOW I’M IN A BAD MOOD!” she screams, black smoke and a death’s head emerging from her mouth. And as Timmy walks away he says, “Hmmph… Well, I was in a great mood ‘til you came along”
I love this strip, although I’m sure the illustrator was not thinking of modeling ontological principles when he wrote it. He demonstrates first how the mood affects thinking and behavior; then how different language changes the mood and then the behavior – of both parties!
Who we are and how we show up is a constant dance and balancing act between what we think, the emotion we’re in, and what we do. To live a happy life we must monitor ourselves in all three areas and recognize that even minor shifts in one can transform the other.
Some examples:
- Shifting our “story” about other people’s motives can cause us to move from suspicion to trust to calm to worry… and how we react to those people will vary based on the mood we put ourselves in.
- Taking a few deep breaths can calm both our emotions and our thinking.
- Moving fast and getting caught up in being busy-busy-busy can shift our mood to anxiety and focuses our thinking on what’s NOT done versus what we have accomplished.
- If we are “feeling good” and run in to another person who’s having a bad day, we can hold fast to our own mood by carefully monitoring our language to avoid picking up the conversation that other person wants to pull us into.
- Wearing a smile pulls our emotions up and opens our thinking
So, the answer to Which? is Yes. If we want to live a balanced life, then, we must attend to all three areas: the stories we tell ourselves and others, the emotions we’re feeling, and how we interact with others.
Have a happy one; and remember that YOU are in charge of how you experience life today!
Happiness, the BOOK!
The 13 Principles of Happiness