I'm reading this book about being stoic and seeing things differently. Or rather it is about learning not to see things through your own perceptions. It's OK for the author to think so but I can hardly run away from myself, as for these feeling things which flood out at times they certainly are not the easiest of things to take control over. It is true we all have different tinted spectacles from which we view the world. Which makes it difficult to get to what is actually going on. It's about being dispassionate and seeing objectively. Of course this is a continuous challenge, and in my mind probably one of the greatest challenges for all of humanity. It's about the way we react as individuals, about anxiety, distress, worry and turning something on it's head. Turning it around.
People don't like change. People don't like having to do things they know nothing about. I am one of these people as well. The worst of this happens in workplaces, when the people above in a hierarchy seem to make decisions and give little information out as to what to do. It is like they can have a secret society, behind closed doors decisions are made and those under them are treated worse than animals. At least animals are fed and petted during the day. In the workplace instead an email is issued, the email become a decree and must be obeyed except the thing is the email is in Swahili. This is the normal management way of giving information as a directive but not taking into account what it is working with. There is a problem, they want it fixed but then they give exceptionally little information about the problem, the hurdles which may have to be jumped or the interpretation of what the problem actually is. Often the question rises, what planet are these people on? How on earth did they get to become managers? Usually they became managers years ago because there is a dead man's shoe progression in the management.system. The order staff are given is in many respects an objective served up by headless chickens. Staff then react, hence an instance of seeing things from a certain self centred perspective, just as the decree was in itself a self centred decree because no talking or discussion took place. In fact at times the entire work place can become a chicken factory or rather a chicken slaughter factory. All what is needed is a large freezer then the carcasses can be kept fresh and sold on.
When one person reacts and doesn't think it in turn leads to yet another reactive set of actions. It results in counter forces which push back. This is the nature of human beings. So it goes being stoic is difficult to say the least. I know when a directive comes to me with an exceedingly short deadline and how I react. I don't like being a headless chicken, my headless chicken impressions make me feel stressed and I have to find a way of shaking my head and covertly thinking how dumb can the dumb become? Yes they actually can become dumber and make the film Dumb and Dumber seem like a Mensa drama. So one way to deal with something like this is not to react and try to find a calm and think. I can't help but think I don't actually care if the decree sent downwards will be actioned, in fact given all the priorities in the world and given yet another priority job to do, I don't mind so much if it fails if the whole system explodes, because it would be a result of poor management. It is like the decree does not take into account it is dealing with human beings, so I don't mind. What will be will be and my role becomes one of not handling the objectives but one of handling the people who are doing headless chicken impersonations. Ultimately the pressures of a work environment can lead many employees to the brink of or actual mental breakdowns, especially where there are chickens involved. At this point the stoicism does kick in.
The moral of the story, don't lose your head be stoic instead. Nice that, it rhymes.
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