Episode 7, A cheerful workplace, Expect the good

We can’t be cheerful while expecting things to go wrong or not as we want. Those are two different emotions. To expect that any of the next meeting, the next maintenance, the next party or the next exam to go wrong has its own reasons. Those reasons are different from expecting things not go in the way you want. First of all what is the relation between this and cheerfulness?

How is a cheerful moment perceived?

To be cheerful means to have a positive view of what is in hand, and positive expectations for what’s coming next. Literally, cheerful is an adjective describing an emotion and can be explained as:

 Something is cheerful when it is giving you a feeling of happiness. If you are cheerful then, you are happy and showing it by the way that you behave

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cheerful

That’s when we spoke about the seeds of light previously we emphasized on the importance of being a seed of lightness and cheerfulness in yourself. Being cheerful naturally shapes the way you behave.

In the current moment, you are either chewing a past memory, anticipating a future event or focusing on something within your hands. If you feel as if in a bright place, that’s a cheerful moment otherwise it is a moment of dissatisfaction. How you perceive the current moment ,it is how you perceive your current thoughts in your mind.

The teacher that shows you the way to expect the good

A past memory is trying to teach you something. So, if you think how bad the last meeting or maintenance was, the lessons are: What went wrong? That past memory is trying to teach you something. So, if you were thinking about how bad the last meeting or maintenance was, the lessons are: What went wrong? Why? What are you going to do in the coming one? Same applies when anticipating a difficult up coming meeting or a maintenance task. Did you well prepare for them?

The real problem happens when we dwell in the dissatisfaction moments and take them as the only available option. When we stop this thought pattern and focus on what to do next to expect the good from the up coming meeting or maintenance? At this moment, we are planting a cheerfulness seed in a dissatisfying moment. Making this as a choice every moment you capture your self starting to feel low or feeling pitty for yourself and your circumstances, allows you to perceive every moment as a cheerful moment.

Change your perceptions for what’s next to expect the good

Believing that the next meeting will be as bad as all the previous meeting lea

Believing that the next meeting will be as bad as all the previous meetings leaves no chance for any thing good to happen. Even if many better things occurred in that upcoming meeting, most probably, you didn’t realize them. Why? Because your mind is trying to fulfill your premade view. It is trying to bring you evident that you are correct and the meeting was as bad as you had imagined it to be.

Changing your perceptions needs actions. First of them is to be aware of your perceptions. In other words, you know that you perceive this maintenance activity as difficult, you judge this maintenance team as troublesome and you expect that this meeting sucks. Second, don’t try to find reasons to prove your perceptions, you already believe it is true. Third, take the responsibility to change it.

How to take the responsibility of my expectations?

Presume that there is something you can do and is available in your hands now to change the next maintenance or meeting outcome. It is enough to presume that there is something that you can do to change those perceived facts. When you open this door of available possibilities to create a change. You are planting a second light seed on your time line. From this moment forward, your mind will provide some alternative actions that you can take. Choose the simplest, the less dramatic and those that brings some brightness to the scene. Avoid the recommendations that gives you the sense of fighting or that includes undeserved harm to anyone. Those ideas would be trying to return you to the dark spot.

Tune your expectations to expect the good

Over expectations are equal to under expectations. If you expect that all maintenance tasks will be on time and schedule for this month, you will start to feel down after the first deviation. If you expect that your maintenance tasks will not be on time and schedule as usual, that’s what is going to happen. And also, it won’t shift you to be cheerful. Split your way to the different destination that you expect to make your life better into small steps. Be firm on taking this step and sure it will be done as you expect.

Focus on doing what is needful for this change to come true. It is simpler when you divide your long road into small steps. The road won’t be shorter but it would be more acceptable. The starting point carries all the secrets of the successful start. The next important tool is the persistence to continue. Think about your intention to get better score in the up coming exam. However, you don’t know why you got those low marks on the previous one. You won’t be able to know what to study better.

Preparedness is a doorway to expect the good

This example is also typical in work, if you intend that this machine won’t fail after maintenance again. But, you don’t know why it failed after the last maintenance. Then you are not sure what you can do to make maintenance for this machine reliable to maintainers and operators. So you need to know how to make your next step different based on the different outcome you want to achieve. But, you need to have at least a general idea which direction will be better by spending some time analyzing what went wrong in the previous time. Insisting on doing the work or study on the same way and pattern and insisting that this willlead to different results is insane.

So it goes both ways. Having high expectations without real preparedness leads to disappointment. Having low expectations of what you are going to do makes you disappointed upfront.

Preparedness and being less stubborn and less insisting that things should unfold that way you want without any step in the correct direction is another step on your way to a cheerful workplace.

In conclusion,

Without expecting the good in what is coming next, you can’t dwell even momentarily in a cheerful emotion. Although intention creates miracle, but we inherently creates doubts in its way when we are not taking any physical step or even expecting the good. The steps we had described to change your perception, to tune your expectation and to take the responsibility of your current perceptions and expectations open the doors to expect the good to come. Like this you allow cheerfulness to brighten your moments.