By Samuel Rosenberg
BECOMING frustrated at work will reduce your personal output and interest, while reducing the profits or levels of service that are provided by your business or non-profit organisation. Frustrations in your work are not uncommon, but you must free yourself from forming bad habits which will aggravate your career and the knock-on effect to your friends and family.
Losing interest in your work will create hurdles for your career path and become a hindrance for your own self-fulfilment.
Where you find yourself frustrated with your working conditions, colleagues, management or customers – or a combination of all of them – you may question whether your career is heading in the right direction and is it really your best choice?
Setting time aside, you can carefully consider yourself, your skills, real-life interests and make a decision about whether your current work is targeted correctly for your career path.
Setting aside and eliminating negativity is a great step forward in helping you remove those frustrations that hinder your financial growth. Where you surround yourself with people who are often making negative comments about you, work, management and your organisation, it is difficult to see the positives that exist.
Nevertheless, your outlook will improve when you focus on the positive aspects and choose to view the difficult things as a challenge to overcome.
Where you cannot remove the frustrations from your workplace, it will be better for your long-term planning to organise a change to another business, a different career or to take a sidestep to keep on your chosen career path.
By analysing the frustrations that affect you, you can concentrate on the solutions to your problems.
You will have seen individuals who act positively when they are surrounded by negativity. When negative thinking co-workers complain about a fellow worker or management, you can still find something positive to say and remove yourself from the conversation as soon as possible.
Office politics and gossip are best avoided where possible. This will help prevent rumours circulating in connection with yourself and you will avoid getting forced into negative and extremely frustrating conversations that waste your time. Also, you have your own reputation to protect.
Where you find a problem that frustrates you at work, make notes about it and use your mind to brainstorm ways to solve the issue. When you approach your supervisor, you will not be bringing a problem to them, you will be providing a solution. They will see you as a positive person looking to enhance the organisation and not just for your own greater good.
This positive attitude will show that you have skills that are not being correctly used where you work. This may give you the opportunity to enter into other areas that use the skills you choose and perhaps learn other abilities that will help educate you and improve your career choices over the longer term.
Where people are frustrated at work, there can be underlying reasons that you may not be aware of. This provides you with the opening to analyse how the problem can be solved and to make decisions based upon whether this is a real work problem or whether the real cause of the frustration is from their own personal perspective.
By admitting and understanding why you are frustrated at work, you will be able to find many positive ways of improving your career path. By choosing the optimistic option and always showing yourself to be encouraging, helpful and constructive, you will be able to focus on the good points and release yourself from those frustrations.
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Samuel Rosenberg is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to [email protected]