After completing a significant challenge at work, I expressed my appreciation to my team for their hard work and accomplishment. It was complicated, sensitive, and challenging, necessitating a lot of attention and overnight works for about 45 days. The initial assessment of our presentation was satisfactory, and we were all relieved and ready to celebrate.
A few days later, we were requested to attend a meeting to discuss the different concerns, points for improvement, and corrections on our presentation. The meeting focused only on the defects and the bad aspect of the work, that I became suspicious about their intention of conducting such a hostile meeting.
I was affected by the lack of appreciation that undermined our work and my team’s efforts. We took notes of the numerous comments and alterations needed and left the meeting.
The negative effect of this meeting was still on my mind. I was reluctant to admit the situation as it is, being a technical meeting, and kept focusing on the malicious intentions perceived against us.
What was disturbing me was not the technical comments addressed in the meeting, but the presumed judgments I had about how the meeting was conducted.
My fear was if I accept this meeting as it is – a technical meeting, my team might not comply with the comments and indirectly, I could introduce a free rein that would be used to manipulate our work. The more I became reluctant to accept the meeting as it is, without judging, testifies that my judgment about what I am assuming was real.
My true disturbance was not real. They were only here because I have allowed myself to wish the condition of the meeting could be different. I wished for the meeting to praise our company, to congratulate us, and to give us some constructive feedback.
For me, ending the wish with different conditions to happen is to start accepting the situation as it is. It was my interference with reality and the attempt to change it that was affecting me.
The only way out of this trap was to perceive that my best interest was to allow what is only real, to be. What is real was, first, the conduction of a technical meeting to evaluate the work. Second, an initial positive assessment was expressed. Third, the work was completed on time and served its intended purpose.
By allowing only what is real to be, and from this place, I could see with more clarity all the manufactured stories and assumptions, which affected me and depleted my energy.
Whether my judgment about their intentions was real or not, it is still unreal for the simple fact that it was made by me or made by them.
When we say “let it be” it is for us not to judge anything that happens. We do not judge anything bad, neither do we judge anything to be good. We don’t judge at all. What is, is. Period. Let it be.
Reality cannot be judged, reality is objective; only opinion, subjectivity, can be the judge.
How often do you confuse reality from opinion?
What are the opinions that make you feel in trouble?