I often speak about how excited I am for the weekend to come. It is great to have time to spend with your family and to complete important tasks, and most of all to relax. However, sometimes I feel that always wishing for the weekend can make me not appreciate the good times that I do have at my job. While I am a counselor at Orlando Life Skills Resource Group, my full time job is as a hospital social worker in an intensive care unit. My job can be very difficult, but also rewarding. Some days I see families caught up in the sudden tragedy of a loved ones illness or traumatic injury, and work with them on coping with this. Other days I might see a patient who has recovered from severe injuries and gets to go home from the hospital. While working with patients and families is how I spend the majority of my day, I also constantly interact with fellow social workers, nurses, physicians and therapists. I have developed several close friendships at my job, and it can make a bad day go much better having these friends to commiserate with. No one else understands the challenges and joys of being a health care worker than these people.

No job is 100% positive all of the time. You spend up to 2,000 hours a year at a full time job. You may work with ten people every day or one hundred, but there are some personality types that you may clash with. You may have a coworker that shirks their duties, resulting in you working twice as hard. One coworker may spread spiteful gossip about other staff members and try to get you caught up in the “drama”. You may have a coworker who claims that work that you did was their own to get “brownie points” with your supervisor. It can be so hard to maintain a positive work life balance when dealing with negative personalities!

Here are some thoughts regarding how to make your work life healthier and less stressful.

*Assume that any time you say something in front of more than three people, it could be heard by your supervisor. While ventilating your feelings to your friends can feel good at the time, do you really want your boss to know exactly how you feel about his new project?

*If you gossip about someone at work, how would you feel if they confronted you about what you said? Is the person you are talking about a good acquaintance, or even a friend? If so, is contributing to gossip about them worth ruining a relationship?

*Are you constantly only providing negative feedback about your job to others, including your supervisor? Are your positive suggestions outweighed by your complaints? If so, begin to be the change that you want in your job.  Brainstorm solutions to problems instead of just griping about them.

*Learn who you can trust at your job, and be careful not to break that loyalty. If something is told to you in confidence, be sure that it remains that way.

I wish I could say that I have always lived by the above advice. If I had, I think that several negative coworker interactions would have never occurred!  I do believe in my heart that you should get a level of fulfillment and satisfaction from the work that you do. 2000 hours a year is far too much time to waste feeling miserable or hopeless in a career. While it may not be possible to start a new job, there are ways to feel more fulfilled. Speaking to one of our Orlando area life coaches or therapists can teach you skills to navigate your career in a more positive fashion. With a non judgmental professional to coach you, you can learn the skills to manage your feelings around co-workers who “push your buttons”.  In addition to this a skilled counselor or life coach may help you find the time and desire to pursue a forgotten dream, decide to go back to school part time to achieve a higher degree, or find the self confidence to apply for leadership programs or specialized projects that seemed out of reach to you before.  Visit the Orlando Life Skills Resource Group Our Team page today to read about our counselors and life coaches.  We all offer FREE phone consultations.  Make today the day you begin changing your life.

Try to live by these words from Theodore Roosevelt  “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

-Jes Stage