The Professional Glow Up: Don’t Take It Personal

Working in a fast-paced, technical environment with professionals that have 10+ years of experience over you in the industry can present you with a piping hot plate of egos with a generous side of corporate politics. What’s crazy is the lengths people would go to be your personal enemy of progress but that is neither the game you nor I should EVER play.

Hear me now and hear me clear: Whatever they do or say to you, don’t take it personal.

You may think I am crazy because how can you not take it personal, right? After all, this person or these individuals went to great lengths to hurt you or to make you feel bad in some type of way but that mindset will have you approaching this matter with tunnel vision and not with the big picture in mind. This issue is not with you and that person. It is with that person and themselves.

Anyone that will willingly do THE MOST to hurt you in anyway has greater issues than the nonsense they are stirring up with you at the office.

The bottom line is that hurt people indeed hurt people and you responding to their rather childish antics is not what this calls for because this isn’t even about you but instead having everything to do with the forces working through them. In fact, the more you respond to them with the same hurt, the harder it is for them to see themselves for who they really are. That is why they don’t need your petty remarks and eyerolls but instead your prayers, your patience, and your humility. I get it, easier said than done, but the sooner you start extending grace to your colleagues, the sooner you will stop doing anything that will have you eating poison, thinking that your enemy will suffer.

When I started to pray for individuals I work with and asking God to help me to see the best in them as God sees in me, it made it easier to not take workplace issues too personal. As someone who can sometimes be emotionally driven a lot of times, this was an important shift in mindset for me. It helped me remain calm (sometimes able to chuckle to myself to keep me in good spirits) in these situations and respond with love even when I knew someone said something to try and embarrass me. It also gave me a chance to see myself in them because if my instinct (whether I followed through with it or not) was to match their petty, then chile I am no different from them and in need of the very same prayer, patience and humility.

Let’s keep in mind that like any of us, the people we work with are better than some of the things that they may do and sometimes need us to show them that through the grace we extend towards them and that Christ also extends to us.

Enjoy the rest of your week, loves!

Love,

Christine

“That grace instructs us to give up ungodly living and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this world, as we wait for the blessed Day we hope for, when the Lord our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ will appear.” – Titus 2:12-13