Yesterday, I returned to work after a break, I took a deep breath and logged into my computer promising myself that I would not get too stressed out by whatever tasks were awaiting me. There were 76 emails, 256 phone calls to make, a couple of reports to do, only one phone message and a pile of minor administrative tasks, this amounts to about 4 days work to complete all due in one day! I had decided to be kind to myself this year and take my two daily breaks walking around the building because desk life is too sedentary and bad for my health but yesterday was a fail. I made an excuse, it was too cold outside and the 3 flights of stairs to my office were exhausting to climb even first thing in the morning. I resolve to do better today.
When faced with way too much work to do, I usually get stressed out, crabby, feel palpitations in my chest and just rush at everything like a crazy woman obsessed with finishing everything in the one day, no matter what the quality of the work. Yesterday, I prioritised, realised that everything would not be done and slowly chipped away at the mountain. For once I was happy that my employer measures performance with metrics because I knew that I would meet my daily metrics even if I only completed 25% of the work. I realised that being kind involves doing quality work, it is better to do a task well and have positive interactions with others than to do many tasks poorly.
In the afternoon, I decided to visit some of my co-workers to hand out some "Quality Street" sweets that I had purchased in London. I was rewarded by getting some good advice on how to handle a personal issue from Deb, a charming lady in my department. I hope to write about the issue in the future, but I will say that Deb has definitely earned the title of "Kind Woman".
In my employment I am also required to work with people from other departments and I was rather perplexed to be asked to help someone in marketing yesterday. I felt that this was not a good day for me to give up time to help someone else, but in my new role as a kind woman I did what was required. The task did not take that long and it paid off, I made someone else happy and prevented them from having nothing to do, I did not have to deal with guilty feelings about being mean and I know that I did the right thing for the business.
Today, I am back to work with about 2 1/2 days of tasks to complete, I didn't reach the summit of the mountain yesterday but the view is okay from where I stand. The two brisk walks around the building await me today along with lots of potentially interesting phone conversations where I help others. Being kind does not come naturally to me but I can see the rewards when I succeed.
Mystic Polly Dreams 