Posts Tagged ‘company morale’

Be You

Sunday, September 1st, 2013

None of us are the same at home and at work. In some ways, that’s good. The way you are when you’re grilling burgers on the deck with friends isn’t necessarily the way you need to be to do your job well. But they also shouldn’t be complete strangers to each other.

It’s easy to lose sight of who you really are when you’re at the office, to become a person your home self wouldn’t even recognize—uptight, risk-averse, and too afraid to color just slightly outside of the lines:

“I’m not on track to reach quota, so I can’t waste my time engaging with other employees.”

“I can’t take it. Jared’s success is making me look bad.”

“Should I jump in and make that joke? What if they don’t laugh?”

This discontent, this frustration—it’s all driven by a lack of comfort in your own skin, a lack of confidence in who you’ve become.

By this point in your life, you probably have a pretty good sense of who you are. But you may have come to the conclusion that straying from the narrow path that you think defines you is cause for alarm. The tendency is to leap back onto that narrow path, to play it safe.

But this gets in the way of growth, and it can also limit your full potential as a person.

Here’s the thing: Your path has gotten you where you are, but y aren’t just defined by that path. You are also defined by the compass you’ve developed along the way, the judgment and values that are woven into who you are. And that judgment can tell you when it’s okay to diverge a bit from the path, to loosen up and just be who you are.

So choose comfort. Always think about what you say and do, but don’t overthink it to the point of paralysis. You know who you are, so don’t hesitate to be that person—to be you.

Everyone’s laughing at the lunch table, and a joke pops into your head. If your compass says no, hold off. But if your intuition says it’s fine, make the joke! Trust yourself to be yourself.

You feel that the company is underachieving, setting the standard of excellence beneath its capability…raise the standard! Trust yourself to know what’s right.

Be you, and have a great Monday.