The Cooling Stream

Do you dread going to work at the moment? Is it the place or are people getting you down and making you stressed? Then maybe you need to pay attention to who you’re talking to and your language.

It may be that you’ve picked up a pattern of thinking and expressing your stress which in turn reinforces the negative feelings you have when you think about work.

Confused? Well, think about how you learn a language. You can learn it by listening to people speaking and then remembering how it sounds. The next step is repeating the sentences or phrases over and over, then after that you associate which context to use them in.

Depending on how motivated you are, some of this will be easy and other bits harder. Perhaps being able to order your favourite drink in a bar is more motivating than learning about that country’s capital or principle rivers.

If you have been socialising at work with people who are cynical or negative about everything, then you are likely to subconsciously absorb their phrases and words. Then when you’re around them, you’ll fall into the same language patterns. This is usually further reinforced by you mentally collecting ‘examples’ of things to prove the negatives so you can be included in the conversation. This is how the cycle of feeling negative and then stressed because of these feelings continues.

You can take a simple step to start to make a big change. You can start to listen to something positive in the morning on you way to work. Also get into the habit before getting to work picking one thing that you’d like to get done. Let yourself imagine doing this task so that you can see it being carried out by you. Then savour the moment of its completion or the bit of a larger task that you’ll have finished. Then come back to reality and quickly review what you did and how you did it. Then once you’ve arrived at work it will be a little like deja vu except that you’ll have pre-programmed yourself to be more productive.

Lastly, mentally check your language to yourself and when you’re talking to your office mates. From now on promise to change the subject to something more positive. You’ll be glad you did and you’ll be doing your career and future prospects a favour.