I hear the phrase “stay in your lane” a lot lately. Usually, it is thrown insultingly at celebrities who speak out on political issues, or some such thing. It’s often used as a belittling admonishment to stamp someone down and put them in their “place” so to speak.
However, staying in your lane can sometimes be a lifesaver. As I look back on my 56 years of life, I realize that for a lot of that time I have been a “people pleaser”. Always one of the first to step up and say, “I can do that!” or whatever, even if my plate was already full or overflowing, or if I was so emotionally/mentally drained that my cup was empty. Helping out when you can is good, but if your cup is empty, or if you already have too much to do, it’s really not good. Never saying “no”, or always saying “I can do that if you want…” is what got me into the mental burnout I experienced just over a year ago, that caused me to need to take an extended stress leave from work. I wrote about that journey here in this blog.
The more you try to please everyone, the more you will probably actually end up pleasing nobody. I am just over three months in on my current job, working for a quasi-governmental organization. There is a lot to do: my job was unfilled for about three months prior to me starting in the position, and it was only sporadically filled for about a year or so previous. Needless to say a lot of stuff hasn’t been done, and there is a lot of catching up to do, and until this week, I have been managing a department of just one: me.
Within this organization there are some unique issues cropping up, and I have been starting to feel myself being dragged into them because they are either close to the orbit of my position, or the kind of things I have some experience in dealing with. This morning while I was driving in to work, I was turning one of these issues around and around in my mind, and the question came clearly to me, “Is this really your problem to deal with?” Sure, I was being dragged into it because it peripherally touched on policies that I am tasked with upholding, but in a larger sense, it is not an issue that’s directly related to my job/department function. I deal with housing, and the issue at hand is with someone who is illegally squatting on land that belongs collectively to the community that I work for. I had a conversation with another manager, and expressed that. I said that while the issue sort of touched on policies relating to my department, I didn’t think it was necessarily my issue to deal with. He agreed, but we both realized that there are too many gaps and gray areas that some issues fall into, and therefore end up unresolved. We talked out some solutions, which I will provide support on, but it will bring in others for whom the issue is also related.
So, yes it’s partially my problem, but not entirely my problem. While I am realizing through this that it is important to stay in your lane and be mindful of taking on things that may not be yours to deal with, it is also important to be there when you can constructively be part of the solution. However, I still have a mindset that if someone higher up includes me in a discussion about an issue, then somehow they must expect me to be the one to deal with it. That is not necessarily the case if I am not the only one in the room. It’s not up to me to be the hero. But, there is that part of me that wants to be; the one that needs to be the one to make it all right and perfect.
Stepping back a bit, and peeling back the layers, I think I see where some of this mentality stems from. Some comes from my early career experiences working at The Mother Church, where any missteps I did take, and there were a few, were met with sometimes severe chastisement. They did not have much tolerance for any kind of mistake, and everyone makes mistakes. That kind of thing sticks with you, and it becomes ingrained in you to try to make sure nobody is ever unhappy with you or your work. Also, I think some of my response to this issue, and to things I am dealing with in general at work, stems from an engrained intolerance of imperfection, and an accompanying impatience with letting the process of correction play out. I connect this with my upbringing in Christian Science and it’s core teaching of how we all are so-called “perfect children of God”. Anything else is supposedly false. Having a teaching like that residing at the core of your thought process is a challenge as you navigate an inherently imperfect world.
I have a few years worth of things to resolve and untangle at work, and every day I remind myself that I can only do what I can do each day, and what isn’t done today will be what I start with tomorrow. Nobody (except me) is expecting me to fix everything overnight. In three short months, I’ve accomplished a lot, and it’s been noticed. The organization and community is grateful beyond words that I am there and working the issues. The higher-ups have said it to me many times. Someday, I might be as happy with me as they are.
Christian Science teaches that we are all supposedly “perfect children/reflections of God”. Anything that is imperfect is unreal and false, or as Christian Scientists call it, “error”. Reconciling this demands a high degree of mental gymnastics, and when this is drilled into you as a child, during those years that your brain is establishing the neural pathways that form the foundation of your internal thought process, it creates an inner voice that constantly tells you that if you fuck anything up (as all human beings do), you’re false; you’re falling short of what you should be able to do. It causes you to constantly beat yourself down.
Nobody in my workplace, from the highest elected official on down, expects me or anyone else to be absolutely perfect all of the time. To a person, they all say that we can only do what we can do. There is an expectation that while you’re at work, you work hard and you do your best, but you leave promptly at the end of the day, and if you stay longer, you damn well better be taking comp time later. When I look back on all of the non-Christian Science-related workplaces I’ve worked at, there has rarely been an expectation of absolute perfection; mainly an expectation that you will do the best job you can do. Usually, in my experience, there has been an understanding that we all make mistakes sometimes; obviously just don’t make mistakes all the time. Otherwise, you’ll be justifiably dismissed for incompetence. Working at The Mother Church, I remember often fearing any sort of occasion when I’d fall even slightly short of the expectation of perfection, knowing that an admonishment awaited even the most minor misstep in some cases. I doubt many in positions of authority even realized what they were doing, it’s just a natural part of being a Christian Scientist to expect nothing less than perfection. I prefer to think of perfection as something you strive for. On some occasions, you will achieve it, but always be willing to accept when you don’t.
Emerging Gently 