Search
Close this search box.

Ep. 16: How to Work Through Tough Situations at Work

Today I’m sharing with you another tool you can use to fall back in love with your day job so that you have the energy to put into your side hustle and so you don’t make any desperate moves that could leave you feeling more stressed and in a bad position financially.

So, you know how if you’re having a bad day or something negative is occuring in your life and someone says to you, “Just look on the bright side,” or “You’ll get through it,” or “You just gotta work through it.” and your thinking to yourself, okay, easy for you to say, but HOW?

If you’re anything like me, you can’t just change how you feel on a whim. But, you CAN change how you feel. You are in total control of it.

I went through most of my life not realizing I was in total control of how I felt and I just needed the tools to quote unquote “Work Through It”. It was through my work with permanent weight loss coach JoLynn Braley that I discovered the tool that I’m going to share with you today.

It’s called the emotional vibrational scale, and what it is is a list of 22 feelings that start with things that feel awesome when you feel them, like Freedom and Passion and Happiness, all the way down to insecurity, fear and powerlessness.

Enter your name and email address and get a free Emotional Vibrational Scale worksheet! You'll also get weekly updates on Fridays with the past week's episodes so you don't miss a pep talk!

1. Joy/Appreciation/Empowered/Freedom/Love
2. Passion
3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
4. Positive Expectation/Belief
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment
8. Boredom
9. Pessimism
10. Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
11. Overwhelment
12. Disappointment
13. Doubt
14. Worry
15. Blame
16. Discouragement
17. Anger
18. Revenge
19. Hatred/Rage
20. Jealousy
21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
22. Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

From the book “Ask and It is Given”, pg. 114

So you can think of these 22 feelings as a ladder. You can’t skip rungs when you climb a ladder, you have to hit every single one on your way up, and then every single one on your way down.

And I don’t know about you, but my whole goal in life is to feel joy, passion, enthusiasm, positive expectation, optimism, hopeful and contentment – right? And those are first 7 feelings on the emotional vibrational scale.

But what I realized when I was first introduced to this concept is that most of the time I was feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, doubtful, and worried – which are in the middle of the list, and at times I felt despair, powerlessness and insecure, which are at the very bottom.

So when you think about your day job or the work you do for a living, how do you feel? Do you feel passion and joy? Or do you feel frustrated? Or even depressed?

The first step is to figure out where you are.

So say you’re feeling overwhelmed at work. You have tons of deadlines, you’re constantly putting out fires and it feels like you can never get ahead. That feeling of overwhelm doesn’t just stay at work, it follows you home and it compounds and before you know it you’re sliding down the ladder into discouragement and then down into despair.

But the deadlines aren’t going to ease up, you’re not going to get any extra help, so now you have a choice. You can slide down the ladder, or you can climb up.

So how in the world do you move from feeling overwhelmed to feeling joy and appreciation in this situation?

You get out a piece of paper and a pen, you identify where you’re at on the scale, and you write a sentence about how you feel, you move up, write another sentence related to the next feeling, all the way to number one.

For example,

  1. I feel overwhelmed with all the deadlines at work.
  2. I feel frustrated that I’m working late.
  3. I feel pessimistic that this situation will change.
  4. I’m bored with this work.
  5. I want to feel content with this job while I’m here..
  6. I’m hopeful that things will get better.
  7. I’m optimistic that the project will be a success.
  8. I believe that I will get through this.
  9. I’m enthusiastic about the possibilities that lie ahead.
  10. I’m passionate about changing how I feel about this job.
  11. I feel empowered to do a great job.

And maybe you don’t REALLY feel optimistic and hopeful YET, but tomorrow, you’re going to do this exercise again. You’re going to pull out the list of feelings, find where you feel today, and work your way up. Maybe you started at an eleven yesterday and you’re at a 9 today. That’s great. Do it again, until you wake up one day and you’re anywhere from a 1 to a 4.

You’ll find that the situation didn’t change, work is still crazy, but you put in the time and effort to change how you feel about it. And when you do that, you’ll have more energy for your side hustle.

And this tool can be used with any situation in your life, not just how you feel about work.

So I challenge you to do this exercise just for the next 5 days and see if it makes a difference for you – come and join our online community of side hustlers over at www.shannonmattern.com/facebook and request to join our Facebook group and let me know how it went!

Today’s pep talk  is brought to you by Bluehost. Go to www.shannonmattern.com/bluehost and get 36 months of web hosting for just $2.95 a month. That’s less than one trip to Starbucks a month – and if you’re anything like me, you’re at Starbucks more than that!

Then you can sign up for my Free 5 Day Website Challenge at www.shannonmattern.com/5day and I’ll show you step by step how to get started building your new website for your side hustle.