On the job difficulties - How to gain perspective.

How to gain perspective - that's been my lesson not only this past week, but for many months now as I spend time in a work environment which is frustrating and stressful in many ways. To work where there is no mutual respect, understanding, or trust is to invite lots of issues into your life unless you can develop strategies to deal with such dysfunction.  So here's what I have learned, and am continuing to learn about how to manage this without coming apart at the seams.  I hope this may be helpful to you, but really, I think writing it will be extremely helpful for my own sanity and peace of mind, which brings me to the first bullet point:

• Peace can and must be obtained by not allowing the circumstances to take control of your outlook.  What destroys calm assurance and confidence is allowing other people's actions to dictate what you will feel, what you will think, and how you will act.  When emotions are stirred, people can quickly become heated, hurtful, or helpless.  None of these is an ideal response in the workplace.
• Stay out of the drama.  Do your job, but as far as you can, do not participate in unhelpful discussion or negativity.  
• Be the same person wherever you are.  Don't be hypocritical - you will lose any credibility you once had.
• Understand what you cannot do.  You cannot nor should you strive to:  change someone else, make someone do something they should do, completely trust someone who has shown themselves to be untrustworthy, or participate in passive-aggressive speech or activities.  Also, you cannot take responsibility for the way someone else performs (or doesn't perform) their job duties.  In your sphere of influence and in the circle of your responsibilities, you make sure all is well with what you are doing but in dealing with people who have no interest in doing their jobs well, let it go.  You can't change it.  
• Draw strength from others who are positive, supportive, and encouraging, but don't bring them down by whining about your situation.  
• If your supervisor is dysfunctional, document what you need to, know when you need help and then seek advice, but only from an extremely trustworthy person.  Don't vent to everybody. Not everyone who listens sympathetically is your friend, and you will regret it.  Be careful about who you talk to. 
• If you cannot work with the dysfunctionality, begin looking for open doors somewhere else. 
• Take care of yourself.  Fill your soul with what you need in order to survive.  Listen to music, pray, seek God's help, enjoy nature, exercise, refresh your spirit, find grace, focus on being kind.   

I hope this will be helpful to you - it was good for me to write about this.  I hope my situation will be resolved in several weeks and will write more about that as it gets closer.  In the meantime, it's just taking one day, one hour, one minute at a time and not allowing dysfunctional situations/people to steal and rob from me and you what is precious - peace, joy, and purpose in doing a job well no matter what.