“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
― Epictetus

Wellbeing in the workplace has been quite an important HR topic throughout the last couple of years. In my opinion, this has happened more so than it should, but how the society is becoming seemingly more brittle by the day, it’s no wonder the prevalence or importance of wellbeing highjacked the spotlight. I talked about how Gen Z is heavily influencing the outlook of the labor market, inside and out, and incidental economic situation worldwide doesn’t really help as well, so many employees find themselves in quite a predicament dealing with their emotions, struggles and challenges in the workplace. While the inflation is eating away at our purchasing power and the overall system becoming as soft as ever, employees certainly don’t know how to manage their behavior, expectations and use their overall social intelligence to their advantage. Succumbing to emotions and then reacting in a way that doesn’t benefit you happens quite often to all of us but there is a set of behavior(s) with which we can take back control of us not being prone to burnout or easily crumbled by the stress of the workplace environment. Let’s dive into the philosophy of helping oneself.

The root cause of sabotaging oneself

Emotions. The simplest and yet powerful cause of bad decisions or outcomes. Emotions often navigate our behavior even when we’re not aware of it so putting them in order is the best possible remedy. However, this is far easier said than done. Strong emotions, usually negative ones if we’re talking about workplace, cloud our judgment and often create a subjective view which is far worse than what the reality actually is. There’s nothing wrong with emotions per se, just to be clear, but rather the chaotic storm of them running amok in whatever situation is the real culprit. So at first, you have a distortion of reality usually caused by self-doubt, external behavior towards us or just plain lack of confidence and then you have the usual absence of control over them. Mix that and you have a cluster of explosions just waiting to happen. Luckily, there are ways you can slowly but steadily get them under control which stand on principle and the simple fact of life, so to speak. The simplicity of those acts sounds astonishingly as common sense but the irony is that it isn’t as easy as it sounds to be.

Pragmatism

Ever heard of „Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.“? That sentence is how you basically describe the meaning of the pragmatism. Essentially, pragmatism is a philosophy which evaluates any kind of theory on their practical application. So oftentimes any job activity usually involves the fact that something will either succeed or not. A good way to look at things in that aspect is to evaluate whether a certain endeavor has the same or at least similar example of practical success. How this helps an individual employee is the simple fact that they don’t have to invest a lot of expectations which also involve strong emotions but just heavily rely on its practicality rather than their own ability for things to work out. It puts them at ease, calms down the nerves and lessens the possible exaggerated self-criticism, all of the factors which lead to burnout. This brings me to another saying which is „Don’t have expectations and you won’t be disappointed.“. Incorporating this way of thinking doesn’t have any detrimental effects other than maybe thinking in absolutes but in this case and topic, the benefit far outweighs the risk, in my opinion.

Stoicism

Ah, my favorite philosophy of them all, and arguably the most effective when it comes to managing oneself and one’s actions. Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy which basically states that things or situations should be taken with strong indifference if one doesn’t have any sort of control over them or their outcomes. It really simplifies the outlook on life if you incorporate it in your daily activities. To also add onto the aforementioned pragmatism and subjective viewpoints, people are usually influenced by the external events rather than the view they take of them, as famous philosopher Epictetus stated. Which is entirely true once you think about it because what my viewpoint is is almost definitely different than the next person’s viewpoint. If I do everything in my power for a task which involved multiple people, I don’t need to stress about their part because it’s out of my control. This isn’t to be confused about the proactivity which can be counterproductive to it. Proactivity without the expectation and cognizance that the outcome is out of your control is fine. In general, many people worry too much about things which absolutely cannot be influenced by them directly and yet they raise their cortisol levels to unimaginable heights thus suffer the consequences, be it mental or physical. A normal person will probably wonder weeks on end how they did in the job interview, stressing and analyzing every detail which could potentially be the trigger for whichever decision, but a stoic will remain indifferent saying they did everything they could in their power up until the point the interview ended.

Takeaway

Being able to take care of yourself mentally these days could be considered a superpower. Wellbeing in the workplace has become compromised by many aforementioned factors so creating a mental fortress around the hardships of environmental stress is nothing short of beneficial. Pragmatism and stoicism can come in quite handy in tweaking one’s behavior by making small changes in attitude and outlook of life. A bad manager could illegitimately gaslight you into oblivion but if you understand how to keep your emotions in check and interpret the situation in a logical manner, there is no such thing as a burnout or compromised wellbeing. Everyone should do well to remember all of this and use it on a daily basis.