I was recently at work, and I did not have a good start to my work day. I walked in and two of my coworkers were really upset. From conversations, they believed our boss was upset with them and was letting them know in a mass email to all the employees. Throughout this, they started to break down an email we had received and what they interpreted out of it. I heard stories about the one crying the night prior because she had believed it was all about her, while the other was convinced it was all about her. Then I read the email, and I just thought she was disappointed and angry at all of us.
This was not a situation where we calmed each other down. This was purely making each other upset and angrier at the situation. Eventually another staff member came, and he tried to make sure we didn’t read too much into it. However, we were just way too overly concerned about it all to be fully talked down at the moment.
When our boss came, we asked if we could have a staff meeting, so we could talk about a few things to start. We could talk over all of our questions and concerns, and we could talk about what her full meaning of the email meant. She was upset because we had been so upset. She did feel a bit slighted since we had jumped to the conclusion that she was really angry with us and wanted us to change a lot of what we were doing. She genuinely just wanted to have something in writing for the handbook and she wanted us to be aware of the addition. It was already the actions we were currently following.
There are definitely a few things I can take away from this. First, I shouldn’t just listen to other people and their experiences. The first thing that happened was I walked into work, and I heard the thoughts from my co-workers about the email and their general reactions to it. I am not saying that my coworkers are malicious, but it is just that they didn’t have all the information, and they were anxious about the email as well. Then their misinformation or anxiety affected me and my thought process.
Then the second thing was I got really angry from my anxious thoughts without even getting the chance to hear my boss’s side of the story or her opinions. It turns out we had all read the email wrong. She wasn’t upset with us, and she didn’t believe we had done a bad job. She didn’t think we were bad employees. She was just adding the practices we were already doing in regard to lunch, our flexibility in our hours, etc. into the handbook officially. She wanted to make sure this information was in writing as opposed to just being passed down verbally from one person to the next, if we ever have new employees.
A verse I want to highlight is Proverbs 18: 15 which says, “The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge,for the ears of the wise seek it out.” This is a reminder that when a heart really wants to make sure to make wise decisions, they will make sure to get all the knowledge available to them. This can be getting all the perspectives from the world, and this can also be getting all the information from God through reading of the Bible and through prayer.
Sometimes all the answers won’t be available to us. We may not be able to ask people questions or get to really understand their intentions. However, we always have the opportunity to seek advice through prayer and through spending time in the Bible and understanding God and His Word. There are lots of answers found in the Bible and through spending time in prayer. There are lots of stories of people who made good decisions and then there are others who made very poor choices and needed to learn a new lesson. There are also many parables told by Jesus to help his followers learn much more. Prayer is also a great way to seek advice because this is an opportunity to talk to God directly. Then once we are with Christ, we have the Holy Spirit to help us better interpret what Jesus is saying through his Word and Prayers.
I am so glad I was able to learn this lesson for myself, and that I was able to reflect on this experience and can hopefully take this learning opportunity to grow more in the future. The challenge for this week is to think through an experience when you have jumped to conclusions and gotten angry or sad even when you shouldn’t. If there is an opportunity to apologize to someone this may have affected, pursue this action. I was able to apologize to my boss, and I know she really appreciated it. Otherwise, make a promise for future situations to not jump to this conclusion.
Colossians 3:23 Blog 