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Imagine yourself an elite athlete. You constantly train, practice your skills, and compete in games. If your team wins or loses, you focus on what went wrong during the games. You obsess about what you could have done better. You apply those deficiencies by perfecting particular skills in future games. You practice, play, and train. Time flies by and soon you are retired. You look back and realize that you did not take the time to truly enjoy the game.  

When you think about your daily work, are you working in this manner?   

I have been guilty of this. In my career I got to a point where I was so used to moving from one project to the next, not taking time to enjoy the progress that I became stressed and struggled to find enjoyment in what I spent 2080+ hours a year doing. If we spend all of our time planning and moving, and we forget to take the time to mindfully appreciate our accomplishments, we will not only find ourselves distressed, we will also feel unappreciated and lack future motivation.  

If we spend all of our time planning and moving, and we forget to take the time to mindfully appreciate our accomplishments, we will not only find ourselves distressed, we will also feel unappreciated and lack future motivation. Click To Tweet

When was the last time you took a step back and mindfully appreciated the work you do? Is it ingrained into your psyche that you are supposed to move from assignment to assignment, project to project, idea to idea, continually moving toward evolving strategic goals? It is almost as if you are running a race in which you continually move and never reach the moving finish line. This constant grind leads to emotional distress and passion burnout.  

Part of the allure of Diversity and Inclusion work is the idea that we get to operate outside the norm—to attend to the specialized needs of those who are continually marginalized. We are selfless problem solvers. Our jobs require us to think outside the box on a daily basis, and we frequently challenge the status quo. If we constantly work at this level, we will inevitably experience high emotional distress. Why? The reason for emotional distress and passion burnout is that we did not stop, step back, and acknowledge our accomplishments. To acknowledge your accomplishments is not selfish or self-indulgent, but it is instead an important neuron-necessity for sending dopamine to the brain. 

To acknowledge your accomplishments is not selfish or self-indulgent, but it is instead an important neuron-necessity for sending dopamine to the brain. Click To Tweet

Marsha Linehan provides mindfulness as a solution to emotional distress tolerance in adults, which I believe can be applied to the D&I workspace. Mindfully appreciating our accomplishments is a healthy part of the process in our work. Linehan talks about mindfulness in the context of accepting and appreciating aspects of our lives non-judgmentally. By accepting and appreciating your work and your accomplishments, you prime yourself to better handle challenges in the future. Here are some takeaways from Linehan’s work as it relates to D&I: 

  • Mindfully appreciating your work does not make challenges go away, but it does allow you to reduce stress and take a break to reevaluate when the next challenge arises.    
  • Mindfully appreciating your work is not just about the reward. It is about allowing ourselves to alleviate the distressing part of our work. It can actually help us transform the frustrating experiences by non-judgmentally observing our distress while remembering the rewarding parts of our work simultaneously.   
  • Mindfully appreciating your work does not take up too much time. Just taking a few minutes to recognize your accomplishment is a great way to de-stress and recollect why you are doing this work. It also provides room for you to recognize the work of others.   

Overall, mindfully appreciating your work is a good way to foster the inclusive culture we strive to create in the workplace. So, the next time you go into your workplace: stop and take some time to build in that reward system that is so highly desired by your brain. Mindfully appreciate how far you have come and what you have accomplished and look forward to what is yet to come.