The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

In The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com.

Brenda, you're having problems. Actually, you're not having problems. You're planning to start a new job. Yes, uh-huh. And you're wondering, what? What's your question?

Okay, I've had problems in the past making friends with a new job situation. Okay, so I was wondering what your advice would be on starting a new job, how to make friends, but not to come on too strong.

Okay, when you say, come on too strong, let's tailor it to you. What are you aware of? How would you come on too strong if I were your coworker?

Actually, I feel like maybe I'm a little bit too friendly, helpful to be in the job situation in the beginning, and I feel like maybe I try too hard, okay, and I come across as desperate.

Oh, that would be the case. I mean, that makes sense, that too friendly sometimes is too eager. You're too eager to make friends and to have it a done deal. You want that handshake, that smile, that joyousness in the morning, and if you try to force a friendship, if you come in, let's say that you came in and I'm your new coworker, and you bring me a cake that you made. I'm over?I mean, obviously, overly exaggerating. And then you notice that I have a lot of work on my desk, and you offer to do half of it for me. You'll stay late to do it.

What is the image of yourself do you have in order to be staying late to finish my work and baking me a cake? What is our relationship? Is it a relationship of equals?

You mean, in a situation like that, if I do something?

If you were to do too much, too friendly. Yeah, exactly. But you're treating yourself as what Brenda?an equal, or are you my servant?

Oh, well, I'm coming across as a servant. I? you know.

So you belittle yourself. Go ahead.

No, I just feel like there would be cake baking, and there would be cookie bringing and just?but I tend to be a little reclusive on my job because I feel like when I start a job that I need to pay attention and to take in as much as I can. And sometimes I become reclusive in that matter. So then, to make up for it, I would go ahead and bake cookies and, you know, take on more work than what I really should be taking on. So I've seen that happen in the past with me. So I'm wondering just to do it differently.

Yeah, you?

What would you suggest?

Well, you've already suggested it for yourself. Once you raise your own awareness of what your pattern is, it's easier to say, well, what would be an alternative? And you can draw on your own personal experience, Brenda. Think of a job. How old are you right now? Ballpark.

Too old.

Too old?

Fifty-three.

Okay, you're in your 50s. Well, I'm there too. I'm actually older than you. So in the 50s, and if you're in your 50s, then you've had a wealth of experience on jobs, right? So you just say, when did it go well when someone new came into work in my office? What can I pick out?one or two examples of times when everything seemed to just flow? Now, your mind might spit up some of the negative aspects of other relationships, but set those aside and say no.

If there were one or two coworkers where they were starting a new job and things went well with them, or I was starting a new job and things went well, what are the elements that make it go well?

So that's where I'm stuck. Just thinking about it. It?s just?

I think maybe because I have worked in the sales area and marketing, it seems like people tend to take their work home with them.

Okay, and how does that affect?yeah, go ahead.

What I've seen a lot lately, because people feel like it's more competitive?there's more people out there looking for work, so they have to work extra hard, and people are taking cuts in pay sometimes?

Several.

Right. So you're saying you've got a new job, and it's in marketing, and you're coming in and you're going to be working with coworkers who may see you as both a potential friend and a potential threat, because if they need to cut the workforce and you're a better worker, then they may be the one that's let go. They may be the dead wood, right?

Yeah, so when I begin a new job like this, I feel like, you know, I need to make friends, but yet it's very competitive. And, you know, everybody seems to be looking over their shoulders right now wondering if they're going to lose their job.

Okay, then what I would recommend is?

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

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You know, everybody seems to be looking over their shoulders right now, wondering if they're going to lose their job.

Okay, then what I would recommend is ask yourself, what is my priority, to really do well in my job or to make friends?

Well, really do well in my job, but also from personal experience? Yeah, I know that, you know, if somebody is not liked in an environment, like a work situation, you know, it's not a good thing.

It's not a good thing. So?but what I'm saying is, sometimes you want to make sure that you're?if I'm starting a new job, I definitely want to try to seam?S-E-A-M, like a seamstress?I want to seam relationships nicely. I want to enjoy the people. I want to first, as if I'm going to the theater, figure out who the cast of characters are. And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, more as a metaphor. Who are the people that I feel at home with? Who are the people who seem to be rabble-rousers? Who are the people who just can't be reached?

So you want to get a feel for people, and you can do that just by talking with them and listening more. You want to give yourself permission to listen more, okay? And draw them out. They'll talk about their families, and if they don't want to, don't push it. And if they don't want to talk about their families, then don't pour it on about your family, because you want to match where they're going with you. You want it to be a nice dance and not where you're too friendly and sounding desperate, not doing too much. And if they bake cookies, then you can bake cookies the next day. That's fine.

But don't catch yourself getting into that old pattern and give yourself an alternative of respecting boundaries, including your own. And what you want to do is just see who the people are that you want to connect with, and then just go out for coffee with them or do something that's small. So you get to feel for each other and turn to them for advice, because people like giving advice. If they don't, then drop them. I mean, don't drop them as a friend, but don't push it. You don't force a mind. That's the key.

So listen, thank you so much for your call, and I wish you the best on your new job.

Thank you so much for your time.

Okay, Brenda.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

May I ask, have you been in contact with your mother recently? Why?

Well, I haven't talked to my mother in quite a while.

Oh, I'm sorry. I did not mean to cry.

And that's from Chocolat, a fabulous, fabulous movie. And when you've had emotional cut-offs in your family?whether it is with a child you just don't talk anymore, or whether it is with maybe an in-law: ?I never speak to my mother-in-law anymore. We had one argument. It is over. I don't want to hear from her ever again.? Sometimes it is a done deal. You really have done the thinking. You have put out your effort to try to connect, and it doesn't work, and you just have said, I recognize the fact in reality that I cannot reach this person and/or I no longer want to speak to this person.

But much more often, it's mixed. You miss the person. You miss the good aspects of your daughter or a friend or your mother-in-law, and yet you can't stand the pain that you felt when you were around them. You felt attacked. You felt hurt. Or you attacked them, and now you feel embarrassed or you try to justify it. We get into those tangles.

When you get into those tangles, and you have this cut-off with somebody where it's not quite settled, you don't want to leave it in that form. You want to figure out what would be the next step to not carry around the emotional weight, because it costs us a lot in terms of emotional turmoil inside that we carry around when we don't resolve issues in important relationships.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner.

One factor that can help you choose the right partner is both yours and your partner's sense of life. According to Ayn Rand, quote: ?Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life that one falls in love?with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that form a person's character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul?the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one's own sense of life that acts as the selector and responds to what it recognizes as one's own basic values in the person of another.?

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.