Ep. 90 3 Coping Skills to Increase Your Midlife Happiness & Calm & Decrease Your Anxiety & Stress When You Hate Your Job

Do you find yourself constantly overthinking and dreading your job? What if you could use your whole brain to increase your happiness and calm—even in a work environment you hate?

 If your job brings on negative thoughts, whether it's due to conflicts with coworkers, lack of direction, or just overall dissatisfaction, you’re not alone. In this episode, MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, explains why our brains are naturally wired to focus on the negative and how this affects our mood at work. But there’s a solution: retraining your brain to find calm and happiness, no matter how frustrating the situation.
In this episode you’ll: 

 1. Learn why your brain is programmed to dwell on negativity and how you can break free from this cycle.

2. Discover three practical coping skills to shift from negative ruminations to a more balanced perspective.

3. Gain more energy and clarity by letting go of work-related negativity, improving not only your own peace but also the atmosphere at home with your loved ones.

 Tune in now to discover actionable strategies that will help you reduce negativity and bring more calm into your work life—even if your job isn't changing anytime soon!

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

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M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:05

Hate your job? Why not use your whole brain? There's no upcharge. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome back to the podcast. It's Thursday, so we're following up on the Inner Challenge Insights we discussed in episode 89 on Monday, which focused on how to stop thinking about work more present, calm, and happy at home. If you missed that episode, be sure to check it out. Today, I want to talk about the overthinking that happens when you're not happy in your job. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why your brain leans towards negative overthinking, and I'll share three coping skills to reduce your negativity, not just for you, but for your loved ones who often end up listening to your work woes. When you're less negative, you're gonna have more energy to do the things that make you happy and feel calmer. There are many reasons that we can be unhappy in our jobs: conflicts with coworkers, changes in duties, low pay, too many hours, not enough training to do the job well. The reasons are endless, but the result often leads to negative ruminations about work. What does negative ruminations or negative overthinking look like when it comes to a job? Typically, it takes two forms. First, there's the internal dialogue. Your self talk that goes on throughout the day. You know, you find yourself being critical of the co worker you don't like, you're pissed that once again you're given a new assignment with no directions, or you're feeling frustrated about more work with no increase in pay. Your mind keeps reminding you of how frustrating this job is. The second form of negative overthinking is the external dialogue or conversation you have with others. Maybe you text your spouse all day about how unfair this job is, or you come home and spend the first 30 minutes venting about your workplace. It's important to know that this reaction is a natural part of being human. Our brains are wired to lean towards negative thinking as an evolutionary survival mechanism to overcome fear. known as negativity bias. This bias helped early humans stay alert to dangers, improving their chances of survival. We actually feel and process negative experiences more thoroughly than positive ones, which means our brain prioritizes and remembers negative stimuli more. Aha! That's the cause! The good news is, while we all have this natural tendency, we also have the ability to train our brains to move past negativity toward a more peaceful and calm state. So here are three coping skills that can help you move from negativity to calm. Step one, decide to use your whole brain. This might sound obvious, but the first step is wanting to let go of negativity. Many people struggle with this, not because they want to be unhappy, but because they're conditioned to let their negativity bias run the show. Yes. Our brain is wired to lean toward the negative, but we have the power to use our mind to move through it. It takes intention and effort to break the negativity habit. But if you want more peace and happiness, why not use your whole brain? There's no upcharge. Step 2. Find your why. Why are you staying at your job if you feel so negative? Most people stay for the paycheck and insurance even if they are looking for new work. Sometimes you stay because you need the training or the experience before you move on. Identify your why and then expand on its value. Think of all the things you pay for with that paycheck, or imagine if you didn't have health insurance. Maybe this job is less than ideal, but the contacts you're making are worth sticking it out for another year. Now, you've added a dose of gratitude and purpose, which begins to decrease the infection of negative thinking. This doesn't mean that suddenly you like your coworker or the assignments you're given. What it does mean is you're moving from simple black and white thinking, which is negativity, to more complex thinking. I still don't like my co worker, but I am very grateful for my paycheck. Step three, train your brain and tend your mind. Episode five talks about this at length, so give it a listen. But in a nutshell, our brain is the organ that runs our body and our mind is our subjective experience of what is happening. If we want to stop negative overthinking, we need to stop feeding our mind negativity. Just like you wouldn't eat mushrooms if you didn't like them. Avoid focusing on the negative aspects of your job. Instead of dwelling on how critical your boss is, make a list of everything you pay for with that paycheck. Here's an example from my practice. A client of mine, Worked in healthcare and was very conscientious. Her coworkers, however, spent a lot of time on their phones until a doctor or supervisor came in, and then suddenly they became exemplary workers. They weren't doing much prep work during the day, so my client often stepped in to cover for them. She would text her partner throughout the day about how frustrated she was, even sharing details how her co workers were watching videos or exchanging recipes. By the time she drove home, she was seething, and she and her partner would talk about it for a whole hour. Now that's a lot of negativity to carry around. I asked her if all this venting made her feel better. After thinking about it, she admitted it didn't. I explained the negativity bias and I told her the choice was hers. She could focus on the why of her job or dwell on the things that made her unhappy. Spending her day and part of her night thinking about her co workers was giving them way too much power over her mood and mindset. So, I gave her the same challenge I'm giving you. For two days, when your mind goes negative, don't let it stay there. Think about your paycheck and what it provides. Put on a song or watch a show with your partner. This might feel disorienting at first, because your mind is used to focusing on the negative. But like avoiding mushrooms at a buffet, just keep moving and find something else to focus on. The next week she came in and she said, I lost my job. I was shocked and I asked what happened. She laughed and said, I realized that focusing on the negative had become a part time job. so much better now. She added, I cannot believe how much energy that was taking from me. Now I have enough energy to look for a new job. Remember, none of us get paid for overthinking about our jobs, but if we understand negativity bias and decide to use our whole brain, we can see the positives, not just the negatives of our work situation. Then we can commit to training our brain and tending our mind, moving from being victims of our thinking to masters of our minds, and that is what helps create happiness and calm. Thanks for listening. I invite you to share this episode with anyone who is struggling with negative thinking. I'll be back on Monday with another episode of Creating Midlife Calm.