What are you doing about it?

Over my years in the workplace I’ve been on countless training courses. Often they make bold claims about changing your life (Spoiler alert, they’ll probably make it better but don’t go in expecting a beam of light style epiphany. You’ve got to work harder than that!), but in a training course a couple of years ago one phrase actually did. 

And it was so damn simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about it before. 

I was sat in a room full of colleagues from around my business in a group training session. We were all talking about various work situations. From people conflicts, to issues with communications. To bottlenecks due to technology hold-ups & lack of training, lack of budget… we’ve all been there haven’t we? One person gets started and before you know it everyone joins in and the room is taken over. Sometimes it’s cathartic to have a moan, but let’s be honest it’s not always very productive is it? And that’s where this life-changing phrase came in. 

Wait for it……. 

“What are you doing about it?”  

It’s so simple it’s almost an anti-climax right? But for me it’s a phrase that changed how I approached my entire life. For anything not going my way, I simply ask myself what am I doing about it? And often the answer is nothing at all! Yet to have something in your life you’re unhappy with and do nothing to make it better is utter madness!  

When I find my mind wandering into the negative space and hear myself moaning I now ask myself the question. What AM I doing about it? And I force myself to be honest – am I doing enough? Have I given myself enough time to think about solutions? Most of the time it helps kick-start me into action and solve the problem. Sometimes though I find myself actually asking “Do I care enough about this problem to do something about it?” and it can be that when I really think about it in the context of the grand scheme of life, it’s not that important an issue at all. Then I can simply make the decision to let it go. It can be a truly liberating feeling.  

None of us can be ‘zen’ 100% of the time, we all have issues we have to deal with. When they start to build into stress, ask yourself this question and then decide to take practical steps forward, or simply to ‘let it go’. That’s what I’m doing about it.  

 Previously published on “Wellness at Work”