It is common for people to “complain” and play “victim”. It can range from how your son did not pitch in his baseball game due to coach’s bias or it could be at work on how you did not get the raise or promotion you wanted.
When we feel that emotion, the most common reaction is to vent to someone who can reinforce the feedback loop. While the reinforcement is a temporary boost to the ego, it pushes you into the victim corner further and will not allow you to look at the situation in an objective fashion.
Let me digress for a bit narrate a personal experience . After a year in my role at a FAANG company, a few of my peers got promoted and I did not. When I asked my manager on what I should do to grow, his answers were generic and not helpful. This did begin a negative churn cycle in my brain. However, around the same time, I was lucky to be paired with a mentor. In my first meeting with him, when I brought up the topic of promotion, his answer was very enlightening– he asked me to make a case by writing down my accomplishments, behaviors (with examples) and their impact and how they match to the expectations of the next level. That was a learning experience for me and to this day I use that mental template to focus on the controllable.
What are some options for handling such an emotion? An option is to do nothing, just suck it up and let Karma and Dharma play a role and equalize everything in the long run– this does work for people who don’t let this impact their mental/physical health. For most people, the option is to hand it objectively using your rational mind. Below are a few things you can do
- Have clarity on the outcome you want to drive– write them down.
- Write down the questions that will provide clarity on actions to take to achieve the outcome.
- Identity a person in your inner circle who can provide feedback on your writing/questions.
- Have the conversation with the person whose decisions are impacting you. Sometimes you might find that the decisions had nothing to do with you.
- If this works for you, you can begin using the people in your inner circle to provide feedback on when you feel the negative loop emotion in you.
The steps above are not necessarily sequential and you don’t need all of them everytime. The above is a tool to think through the details. Give it a go and see how it goes for you or come up with your own model.