If you are working, you are most probably working in a project based company. And being in a project means that you’ll need to deal with various type of people. You might like some, but not so much for the other. How many people that you have encountered that inspire you? If you can find those people, keep them. Learn from them. You might need the skill that they have to help you move forward in your career and life. In some project, I can find only 1 or 2 person that are discouraging, but their influence is much larger than those who inspire. I can feel that this kind of behavior is contagious. I’ve seen only a few people can stay in their sane thinking when this kind of person drain their energy. Have you feel that way? Even though you try to be positive, it seems the negative energy pull you down, making it hard to look at the problem objectively

This kind of response affects more the people around you compare to the positive ones. I’ve in that kind of situation and I feel like I’m dragged to the same mindset and it’s really draining my energy. By focusing on the bad thing, it make things harder to see the problem from different perspective. If you know how to keep your heart in check, Please share with us. I’m sure that kind of attitude is very valuable in this age. Unfortunately or fortunately, we can’t control the situation around us. but we can change our attitude to face it. I can say that I’m not that strong in my perspective, so that when the discourager come to my life, I’ll be dragged down. But I feel blessed to have people around me that can encourage me to face and fix the problem. Here are 4 lessons that I learned from the people who able to keep their perspective amidst of negativity that we encounter.
1. keep the attitude toward fixing the issue
I always feel burned when the other people in the project says bad thing about what we have done and nullify all the hard work that we have done. Everyone knows that there’s an issue, and instead of providing solution, there’s always a person who state the obvious and just blame the error. In this situation, even though it’s hard, keep your attitude and mind toward solving the issue. in every problem, there’s a solution and way around it. If you focus on the problem, you’ll stuck at the problem. Only when you focus on the solution, then you can see possibilities. keep your focus on something that you want to achieve. If you want solution, focus on finding it, then you’ll get it

2. Don’t be stingy about what you know.
In the old Chinese Kung Fu movies, usually there’s a teacher that teach everything he knows except one final lesson. The reason being so that just in case one of his disciples try to fight him, he still able to defeat the disciple. It still true in most of our current situation. I feel that most of the time, including myself, when people ask about what we did, especially about the mistake that we made, we will be quite hesitant to tell the truth. Or maybe, it’s just me. I feel that I can’t tell that I made a silly mistake and causing the project stuck at some point. Recently, I prove that this is wrong. When I share the truth about the mistake that I made, people are forgiving. The manager will angry at the silly mistake that I made, but they appreciate what I’ve done to fix it. It’s the same like what you know. When you know something, share the information to other people. You’ll get benefit because you know something that people might not know, and it help you to retain the information longer and better.

3. Set the thinking to “it’s my fault”
It seems like a stupid idea, because when you just take the blame for any issue, people will put the blame on you and probably, your job will be gone after this. Is that right? That might be true. But, the point here is to stop the argument on throwing the blame at someone else. There’s a time when I know we have spent a lot of time to find out whose mistake it was. It was so dragging and we became so defensive. and during that time, everyone just think that “it’s not my problem, let the person who made the mistake, fix it.” Doing this, it will break the team. everyone will become suspicious with others and it will get hard to fix the issue. at the end, it will be like courtroom, where the defendant will proof himself guilty and try to proof the other party is wrong. But when you think that “it’s my fault”, you’ll stop thinking how to defend yourself, and you’ll start thinking on how to fix the issue. And when you contribute what you’ve troubleshoot, people will chip in their part. Then, you’ll see that at the end of it, everyone will feel that it is a great accomplishment, because it’s not “I” that finish it, but it’s us.

4. Start with yourself
I can feel that when you’re busy, it is hard to say let yourself handle that thing. I’ve been dragged to a lot of project with no other resources. And it seems that a lot of things being pushed to me and I can’t complete it. I can’t say that I’ve been successful in this, but I try to take what has been given to me and do it as much as I can. I still complain and request for more resources, but I can tell you that complaining, won’t take you anywhere. It is impossible to say to others to take responsibility when you don’t want to be involve in it. In this hard circumstances, I learn that when you take the responsibility, you’ll be able to see your limitation. And when you find your limitation, you’ll be surprised that there are other people that can help you. When you expect somebody else to start, most of the time nothing happen. But when you initiate, you’ll see that everything is progressing. And, trust me, it is more encouraging to see it progressing, rather than you’re proven right and the task is stuck

When you try to apply this yourself, you’ll find that the reality is not always nice. People will try to manipulate and push the problem to you. But keep it up. I can’t say that you won’t get burn and you won’t stressed out, as at the moment, I’m getting burned and stressed out because of this. But, since I’m going to face it anyway, no matter what I think and/or do, it’s better to get the most out of it. I can’t change the situation, but I can change my attitude. You can do this too. Once you get through this, you’ll see the reward.

Question: How do you keep yourself from keep moving forward in the midst of hardship?

2 Cor 4: 6 – For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”[a] made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.