Each week I choose one of your questions and do my best to offer guidance and support to help you along your journey. I also encourage everyone who is reading this to offer their words of wisdom as well by leaving a comment at the end. Please click here to learn more about this feature.

Here is this week’s question (submitted anonymously):

How would you deal with a coworker who feels that it is her job to tell me how to do my job? What would be a good way to respond to this person without creating a more hostile environment?

To help each of us understand this situation better, I wanted to share a bit of background information. This person works as a mammogram tech, and they schedule two appointments for each patient: one in her department and a second in the radiology department. However, oftentimes the radiologist will look over the mammogram results and determine that there isn’t a need for the second appointment, and so the patient is sent home and the appointment is cancelled.

She has taken it upon herself – as a courtesy to the radiology department – to be the one to usually cancel these appointments in the computer. Even though this is not part of her job description, and she has many other patients waiting, she does it because she wants to be a team player.

However, the radiology tech recently reprimanded her about not being mindful enough about following through with this task, and she felt very unappreciated and frustrated – she felt that it was this person’s job in the first place.

I would start by saying that there is something very charged about wanting to do something nice for someone and feeling like it’s not appreciated. And I can feel your anger and hurt, which is completely normal. You feel that you are going above and beyond at your job and are frustrated that this person doesn’t acknowledge that and pat you on the back rather than criticize you. I completely understand how frustrating this must be. I think we have all worked with someone that pushed our buttons at one point or another in our lives.

There are a few things I would suggest for you:

• Direct communication. Talking with this person directly – not from a place of anger and confrontation, but rather from a place of resolving the problem – is a great first step toward resolving your hurt feelings and working toward a solution together. Even if you are so angry that you can’t imagine working it out with this person, you can go into this with an agenda of your own: the sooner you get this resolved, the sooner you can redirect your energy to a more positive place. This must be so draining for you, and the sooner you can clean it up and move on, the better.
• See this as a lesson. I believe that we are each here to learn lessons, and we meet people throughout our lives who are teachers. If you can see this woman as one of your many teachers, it may reduce the charged emotions you feel when thinking about this situation. She is here to help you learn something about yourself. She is here to help you grow spiritually.
  
• Go within. Oftentimes when we are hurt and frustrated, our egos want to come back swinging. But I would suggest taking a moment to go within before doing so. Take some time to get in touch with your higher self. Write about why this situation infuriates you. Is it this situation alone that is upsetting, or does it trigger a pattern that you’ve felt throughout your life? Journaling is a wonderful way to get in touch with these emotions and come out the other side feeling more grounded.
  
• Empathize. Is this person going through a tough time personally right now? Is there something going on with her that may be causing her to act this way all of a sudden?  Perhaps you could try putting yourself in her shoes and imagining how living her life would feel. This is a great exercise to try and understand where another person is coming from when we truly aren’t on the same page.
• Be grateful. I always say that you can’t lose with gratitude. Even though you are experiencing this friction at work right now, think about all of the wonderful parts of your job that you are grateful for. If you can take yourself out of this situation for a moment and imagine that you are floating over your work environment, I think you will notice that there truly is a lot to be grateful for – you are doing such great work and helping so many people!
• Put on your shield. If you imagine that you have a protective shield around you when you are at work, then negative comments won’t be able to get to you – they won’t be able to penetrate through the shield.
• Raise your vibration. Raise yourself above these circumstances and look at all of the lives you are helping to save. Focus on positivity. The more you focus on it, the more it spreads. You might find that your entire work environment’s energy lifts, too.
• Realize that you can only change yourself. This can be such a hard lesson, but it’s absolutely a true one. You can change your reaction to this situation. You can change how it will impact your life. You can change how much of an emotional charge it carries. But you truly can’t change the other person – their reactions are their own.
• Ask for help. If none of these suggestions work, ask someone to help you. I truly don’t think it will come to this, but you could bring in a mediator or schedule a meeting with your boss to talk about it. You could ask to have it written into her job description.

I have been in some sticky situations myself at work, and I know how the energy can change when conflict is in the air. I hope these suggestions are helpful for you – I think if you can shift your focus away from her and back to you and your reaction to this situation, you will be able to start changing your response and the impact it has on you. Please keep me posted on the outcome!

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For everyone who is reading, please offer your words of wisdom as well! Let’s all chime in and offer guidance and support for this brave soul who opened themselves up by asking for help!

I would love to answer your question in next’s week’s post!
Please email your question to: info@soulfuljournals.com. (Please put “Ask Away” in the subject line.)

If your question is chosen for that Friday’s feature, I will let you know if I need any additional information. It’s completely up to you if you would like your question to be anonymous or public. If you would like to keep it anonymous, please make sure to leave out any identifying details.