I am truly amazed at the obstacles and challenges that have presented themselves in the past month. It began with my return to work after my holidays. It seems a little surreal. My family had been coping with the loss of our dog for two weeks and returning to work was like getting hit in the face with a cold glass of water. Life went on for them, they didn't even know my dog, they (my workmates) empathized with me, but were not really affected by my life altering events. Hmmm.... So the first week was a struggle for me emotionally, I was coping by sticking to my routine, exercising and practicing kung fu.
And the, one of my clients attempted suicide. This is a very challenging thing to have to deal with. Once the person is safe and the crisis for them has past, then the team has to re-group and look after themselves. It is part of my job as team leader to make sure that my team is doing what they need to do to look after themselves. This includes reviewing the incident and discussing what we could do differently next time, listening to their thoughts and feelings regarding the incident and coaching them to use their coping strategies when not at work. I love looking after people but I find it exhausting. My coping stategy in this case was to sleep as much as possible and pore all my energy into doing my job. Good stategy for work, but not great for my routine for exercise and kung fu. This is why we do extra reps and work hard when we can, so when life takes a chunk out fo us, we can survive. I survived after a few days and got back on track with my routine.
And then I go to my first wellness meeting since before Christmas. I am shocked by the attitudes of most of the members of the committee. They seem to have lost their good will towards mankind over the holidays. They were no longer interested in improving the wellness of our work place, they seemed focused on creating something to show that we were trying to improve other's wellness. So instead of actually doing the work, they wanted to prove to others (?) that they were doing it. When they spoke about their teammates, it was in a desparaging manner and when confronted were defensive, blamed each other and took no responsibility for their actions. Hmmmm.... how did I fall in with this bunch of "caregivers", who only wanted everyone to think they were concerned with others? A bigger question.......what am I going to do about it? My first reaction was to walk away, label them hopeless and avoid the group at all costs. I don't think that I could sleep at night if I did that so I decided that I will stay with the group. I am going to continue to coach them that it matters how we talk to each other and how we talk about each other. I am going to continue to lead by example by not participating in their negative talk. I didn't think wellness would be so hard.
And then in class one day, Master Brinker talked about wiping the slate clean with the beginning of the Year Of the Ox. I liked that idea and we were to commemorate this new beginning with one thousand push ups and sit ups. My life/work threatened to get in the way but I was determined to complete my task. I set my watch and whenever possible, I stopped what I was doing at work and did 25 of each. This worked and I was 3/4 done by supper. I had mentioned the challenge to Katie and at first she thought she was too little for such a big task. When she focused on all the ways she could complete the task, she became more and more positive she could succeed. We were lucky enough to get to finish our push ups and sit ups together after supper and it was a great experience.
And then we got sick. Two weeks of not doing anything physical due to bronchitis and laranghitis, leaves a lot of time for relflecting and planning. When I envisioned myself reaching my goals, I thought I would work hard everyday and slowly, steadily, I would get there. This has not been the case, it is more like feast or famine. I have short periods where I can train for 2 or 3 hours a day and short periods where I can't train at all. It seems to be balancing out so that I am meeting my goals, just not the way I thought it would happen.
Now we are about to embark in a celebration of the Year of the Ox, congratulate our accomplishments of the past year and make plans and goals for the year to come. Whew.....what a month!
No comments:
Post a Comment