Staying in the wrong room

Hi coaches,

Listening to the podcast this week led to some alarm bells in my head – my workplace is the wrong room in terms of there being a lot of negativity, people criticising and bringing others down, a lack of ambition, lack of leadership and if I’m being honest with myself I have known that for a while. I previously made the decision to stay because I knew I would be starting IVF and so I didn’t want to risk losing maternity pay if I were to end up starting a new job pregnant (I have a three month notice period). Unfortunately for various reasons the wait to actually start IVF has been much longer than my partner and I anticipated and we still haven’t started, so now I’m kicking myself for not acting quickly and changing job months ago, as my previous decision has meant I’ve ‘stayed in the room’, which has actually become more negative during that time. I know I wasn’t to know that the waiting time and consent process for IVF would be so drawn out, or that the general staff morale at my workplace would deteriorate, but there’s still a big bunch of regret there.

So now I really am set to start IVF within the next few weeks, so I’m finding myself once again making the decision to ‘stay in the room’ to be able to have maternity pay IF I get pregnant, for the purpose of stability at this time, because changing jobs during the IVF process and risking no maternity pay would be a bit crazy. But, I’m also worried about what the consequences will be from staying in this job even longer.

So I think I’m going to set a short term goal, perhaps for between now and starting IVF to do thought work about work situations, to get myself to a point where relatively minor events at work are no longer causing me to have really strong emotional reactions. My hope is that by working on it as a goal I will find a way of coping with staying in the room that bit longer. Perhaps I also need to find ways of going into different rooms in a small way. And how to not make it a problem that I am choosing to stay in the wrong room.

I realise I’m making my own suggestions here, but any coaching to help me approach the next few weeks would be appreciated.

Answer:

Sound great! From what I’m reading, it seems as though you’ve identified a goal and some rocks.

From what I can see, the goal is: Finding new ways to cope with being in the room (at work) a bit longer.

The rocks are:

Thought work between now and IVF start
Finding ways to be in different rooms
Consciously not making it a problem to stay in the current room

It sounds like the way you’ll know you’ve met your goal (or one way) is that you won’t have strong emotional reactions to what you think are minor events. What does that actually look like to you? How will you be reacting to what you consider a minor event?