Over The Last Week

   Compared to my last weekly post, Week Before My Birthday, this last week has been the opposite, going from bad to good. Although saying that it started well, as I enjoyed my birthday & four day weekend. However when I got back into work I was still struggling with the training I was in & putting it into practice. As with last week I was feeling self conscious about how I was performing, which led to me making mistakes & struggling to concentrate. Basically I was in an annoyingly vicious circle, with the more mistakes I made, the more self conscious I'd feel, leading me to then make more mistakes...

   I know I keep banging on about it, but I kept doing my Alternative Journal while my general mood was low. I find it helps to temporarily boost my mood as I'm able to reflect on the positive parts of the day which generally make me smile. While I'm feeling low it won't 'fix' my mood on its own, but it hopefully keeps pushing my sub-conscious to focus on the positives during the day & not dwell on the negatives. Which lets face it have already happened, you can't change them now, so why worry. All you can do is rectify the error tomorrow.

   Throughout the week I began to feel less self conscious & generally performed better. I work in a finance team & as our financial year end is approaching, the usual 'panic stations' are put in place to get everything finalised by the end of March. I've noticed over the years that as a team is put under pressure you can see the stress levels increase. Its almost like stress is a cold infecting the team & as one colleague is feeling it, a knock on effect spreads throughout the team. I've also noticed that its usually from top to bottom, so first the team manager feels it & 'delegates' the extra workload/stress throughout the team.

   I find the best way to deal with it is to be aware it is happening, step back & remind myself that just because they're acting like headless chickens doesn't mean I have to. In the past I've actually had other colleagues accuse me of being lazy simply because I'm not getting wound up in this type of situation. I shouldn't really, but my mischievous side tends to take over & I wind that particular colleague up. No, it doesn't help the team, but it does make me feel better! :-) I don't hold it against them as I know they're only lashing out because they're stressed. I even remember one colleague apologised after he'd calmed down & that was after I'd wound him up.