Friends, fear and failures

During the last year, I have met three very different people with one common feature: they all choose to hide their private life from their colleagues at work. Each time I discovered this feature I was equally dumbfounded and shocked. I just don't seem to understand.

In an effort to understand these people, I'll first try to look at my own attitude. Why do I find it desirable to tell my colleagues of my private life? I come to two distinct conclusions:

1. First the utilitarian finding: I find that telling people what I like, what I do and what I value, makes them understand me better. It is easier to communicate with people whom I understand. I prefer to co-operate with people whom I understand and I feel that the results are better with such people. Therefore, communicating with people about private matters improves my performance at work.
2. Then the romantic finding: I enjoy the company of friends. Quite simply, I love my friends. The more friends I have, that much better. Then if I can make friends with my colleagues at work, then why should I not do it?

Making friends with everyone is naturally not possible, but I feel that trying to become/be friends is better than not trying. The few times you loose on the bet are by far outweighed by the numerous and rich wins.

Then what motivates hiding one's private life from colleagues? I'm assuming that the motivation is a fear of some sort. The only two fears I manage to conjure are:

1. A fear that one's colleagues will abuse the information from the private life. In other words, the fear would include a possibility that the colleagues use information to their own advantage, either by exposing one's secrets to a third party or by threatening to expose those secretes. However, there are several logical fallacies in this argument. First of all, if you'd already told about your private life to others, then there would be nothing left to expose. Secondly, do you really, really have secrets worth hiding? (It would perhaps be helpful to list those secrets and contemplate the exact consequence of each and the probability of that actually happening?) If your colleagues really know you, they understand you and they understand why you do/have done things as you did and they will see now fault in your actions. Thirdly, if you entrust your colleagues with details about your private life, you will also gain their respect and trust. Betraying someone you respect is indeed unlikely. In conclusion, I find it rather improbable that colleagues will abuse information about your private life.
2. A fear that one's superiors or the company abuses information about your private life. Such an abuse would of course be illegal in many cases, but let us assume that that abuse happens in a legal way or that they are not punished. Still, when it comes to superiors, all the fallacies explained above still hold. When it comes to the company in it self, we must remember that a company is run by people, and the above explanations hold for any people with whom you come in contact. Thus the only fear would concern people in parts of the company that you have no personal contact with. That fear I cannot circumvent right now.

Whatever the reason is for non-communication of the private life, I believe that concentrating on merely fears is contra-productive. We should look at the balance. How probable are the abuses and the benefits and what are their consequences? In my book, the certain great benefits by far outweigh the tiny risks of abuse.

Observing my three friends, I am saddened to find evidence that supports my claims. Two of them have recently experienced terrible hardships at work, explicitly, they have gone through quite a lot of fighting at work. Note, however, that I do not claim that they are responsible for causing the fighting. My claim is that obtaining understanding between colleagues is both a preventive and mitigating measure to fights. In other words, fighting is less likely and the possible fights are milder between people that understand each other.

This is a typical self-reinforcing evil spiral. Secrets undermine mutual understanding, increasing the probability of problems, thereby increasing the need for secrecy. This imminent failure can be turned to self-reinforcing positive spiral by realising that an open attitude increases mutual understanding, diminishing the probability of problems, thereby diminishing the need for secrets. Remember, the responsibility of this re-framing of the situation lies on your shoulders.

It's not the others, it's you

I was reading de Mello again, when I rediscovered something important. When facing problems in life, we have the tendency to blame someone else. For example, someone might feel that his or her relationship is not working because the partner always does this or that. Someone else might not like her or his job because it is too demanding, not demanding enough, it has a bad atmosphere or this and that.
No. The job does not have a problem, you have a problem. Your partner in the relationship does not have a problem, you have a problem. It's you. You have a problem. You are the reason for your problems. It is painful to admit that you are guilty, but the pain exist just because it is true.
You can hardly expect everybody else to change to suit your particular preferences. You must change. You must change your attitude or you must change your habits.

EDIT: You can change your habits.

Happiness traps

Learning to be happy is an uphill struggle, but the efforts are deeply rewarding.

I've recently occupied a lot of my private time to observing phenomenon that I would call happiness traps. I have not coined the term, but I find it very useful. A happiness trap is a mechanism that at first glance seems logical, but produces unhappiness in the long run. Often, happiness traps are also self-amplifying, they lead to vicious spirals of unhappiness.

Let us look at a simple example. A friend of me recently said to me "I need to improve my performance in X." Ok. That seems reasonable enough, perhaps even noble. But the happiness trap is obvious. The keyword here is "need". "I need to improve." As if improving performance would be essential for survival. As if failure to improve would lead to a disaster. I can assure you that his performance in X is already excellent, so the desire to improve is only inside his mind. Failure would only hurt his ego.

Perhaps a more fruitful approach would be to say, "I want to improve"? Indeed, this is a better approach, acknowledging that it is a desire, a "want". This way the requirement of reaching the objective is removed or at least diminished. It is a big step from need to desire, a big improvement in my opinion. But still only half way. It still connects improvement to the self. If the goal is not 100% met, it is a failure to fulfil the desire. It is a failure. It makes him unhappy.

My proposal would be to say "My objective is to improve in X." Then success is more detached from the self. An objective is not a performance requirement. It specifies a direction. Concentrating on direction rather than a performance level, makes the effort or the process the goal rather than the performance level. That enables us to become happy from a good effort, even though we fail to reach the ultimate goal.

Now I have caught myself talking about failure repeatedly. Failure is not something that a happy person ponders upon. The emphasis of a happy person is always on a good effort rather than a success or failure. If you only require success, you will sooner or later face failure. You will become unhappy. If you emphasise good efforts, you don't need to fail. You can have difficult days, where good efforts are difficult, but because it is difficult, it is still a good effort.

I am afraid that I am over-analysing this simple sentence. But I feel like it demonstrates a pattern. To use thinking patterns of needs, lays the way for unhappiness. Failure becomes imminent. Concentrating on the process, goals and directions, builds a sustainable happiness.

Some claim that such detachment of desires means that you detach from your feelings. If that only were possible! Acknowledging your desires actually makes you more aware of your feelings. You become aware of how your desires control you. Awareness, in turn, gives you the opportunity to reflect if that desire is something that you really want, or is it just something superficial, and it gives you the opportunity to choose if you want to follow that desire.