This is a must watch video.
Does your nonprofit or company tell you to “be positive” and “smile”?
Is that in your job description?
Why is it wrong to “smile” and “be positive”?
Have you ever experienced:
1. Bosses telling you not just to do your job, but to make people around you happy, and smile at them all the time.
2. Trying to control the moods of people around you, because if you’re not making them happy you’re a bad person and a bad worker who can never fix any problems of the world!
3. Not being satisfied until you have exhausted yourself in pursuit of making other people happy, and then not even then. And your true feelings? Stuffed under your shirt.
4. Never feeling like you can be your “real self” with people
Okay, listen up.
No more smiling masks.
No. You can take off the mask now. It’s time for everyone to realize that “trying to be happy” is their problem.
It should be okay for you to cry at work. Or be angry. Or laugh. Or be indifferent. Or bored. Very few people are super-excited to be at their desk all day.
The real kicker is the EXPECTATION by the boss, board, or others that we get super-excited, whether it’s for the job interview or the daily grind. If someone in authority at your job tries to police your feelings, and tells you that you’re “uptight” or “you need to smile more,” it’s time to start looking for a new job.
You have a right to express your feelings.
You are completely capable of doing an incredible job without being the “Manic Pixie DreamGirl.”
It would be so easy to blame “The Secret” but I think the problem goes deeper than that, into the positive psychology movement which has been embraced by corporate America and increasingly by the nonprofit world as a means of social control.
If you are a fundraising professional, you ESPECIALLY are under pressure to smile, to be nice, to be excited about the work.
Don’t buy the hype.
It’s okay to be serious, to be real, to be focused on the urgency of your mission. You don’t have to run around with pompoms and cheerlead 365 days a year.
Cut yourself some slack.
Realize that no matter what your outward mood is, the work will get done.
Take off your mask now.