Let it go Louis

Even the best of jobs can have their challenges as not everything is always going to go your way or as you would like it. Upsets, issues with bosses and colleagues, offences, missed opportunities, losses, perceived unfairness and a host of things that can cause negative feelings are going to happen.

The question is how do you deal with them? Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is as much about how we handle our emotions and negative feelings as it is juggling time and energy between many commitments.  If people allow an issue to fester, it can move on from simply being something they moan about for a short while, to becoming an obsession.  In the worst cases, people can harbour resentments, hurts or issues to such an extent that a single moment in time can end up shaping their lives from that point onwards. For example, I knew a man at work once who still went on about the unfairness of a missed promotion 10 years previously! He’d become so resentful and bitter about it that 10 years later it still had him.  Needless to say his ensuing negative outlook made him unpromotable.

What are the keys then to maintaining a healthy perspective and not letting things get to you unduly? 

The first is to accept how things are. You’re going to lose or be offended sometimes, so why let it consume more energy and emotion than necessary?

The second is learning to “let it go”.  There’s a saying that’s become popular in America - “Let it go Louis”. It comes from a Budweiser advert starring frogs, where one frog is going on and on grumbling and the other frog urges him to “Let it go Louis”.  The humour of it caught on and people use the saying now when they see someone continually obsessively ranting about something.
Another saying in the states which I love for its pithy accuracy is; “Don’t let them rent space in your head”.  The point is; deal with the issues you can do something about, but don’t dwell on issues that are beyond your control – let them go and move on.