Gaining Ground over Unfairness and Comparisons

Recently I've begun to realize a huge unfairness that abides in my workplace. There are a number of my fellow-employees who spend most of their time on their cell phones in private conversation or playing video games or filling out their Facebook profiles, while I spend my day doing my job, which takes an entire day to do. Admittedly, I was more tired than usual today, but I came home in tears. It's hard to take, and it all seems so unfair. It was all I could think about this whole evening.

I know better than to try to change other people. For my own sake I really needed to get a handle on this or else I'm going to end up quitting the best job I ever had at a time when good jobs are not so easy to come by.

In my previous life (a couple of years ago) I would have called a Christian Science Practitioner to talk it over with and perhaps pray with, but that was back when I didn't have confidence to think for myself. Now it's time to and come up with those much-needed successful solutions on my own. And thankfully there are a lot of intelligent people out there who have some wise things to say. And I found them, not by praying, but by Googling them. (Maybe Googling in the new prayer.) Actually, I Googled the question, "How do I deal with Unfairness?" and found several good articles that helped me immensely (I posted them below).

The first is a very brief interview about two regions of a brain and their activities when its owner reacts to unfairness in negative or positive ways. The second piece is about proactive ways of dealing with unfairness. Together, these articles gave me some good ideas to get out of this rut and get on with my life.

It occurs to me that my feelings of unfairness are directly related to my previous susceptibility to religion, belief in God, emotional need for prayer and calling on a Christian Science Practitioner for help often. My current problem with unfairness is that of weakness, lack of confidence and control over my life, same as I felt all those years of religiosity. What an eye-opener!

My tearful homecoming tonight was a remnant of years of feeling subservient to the whole religious life I used to lead and everyone I came into contact with. But now I think I get it. I need to bring more proactivity to my job and confidence in my own numerable abilities, same as I do to my life. I'm not waiting around for God to tell me what to do anymore. I am doing a great job at work and my boss knows it, so why am I comparing myself with my peers? I need to keep up my good work in spite of what my co-workers do; look for ways of doing even better; and don't feel sorry for myself. It's a waist of my precious work time and threatens my otherwise happy career. Now I just have to remember all this tomorrow, and act accordingly. Proactively.

Hope these is helpful to you.


How the Brain Helps Us Deal with Unfairness

2008-12-15

Narrator: If you were offered five dollars out of twenty-five dollars, would you find that unfair? This is Science Today. Matthew Lieberman, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to see what goes on inside the brain when we interpret unfairness.

Lieberman: And we saw something very interesting here. On the one hand, we saw sometimes people showed greater activity in that insult region of the brain, the anterior insula, and when they did, they tended to reject those offers. But there were some folks who had a tendency to accept those unfair but desirable offers and when that happened, we instead saw a region of the prefrontal cortex that was more active and to the extent that it was, we saw that potential insult response diminish. So, what we see here is people engaging in some kind of self-control, it appears, so that they can take the long-term good, which is the money, and allow themselves to be OK with the psychological insult that they've received.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.

http://www.ucop.edu/sciencetoday/article/19177
Science Today - at the University of California


and


How Responsibility Transcends the "Life is Unfair" Attitude
2007-08-27

How do you deal with "unfair" situations? How do you feel if someone receives something better for doing less work than you? Is it right that you sometimes end up worse off than someone else even though you have better intentions?

When you say that something is unfair it implies that what happens to you is outside of your control. One of the main things I believe self-improvement is about is learning to take more responsibility and control for your life and destiny. The problem with claiming that something is unfair is that is has the complete opposite effect. Even if there are rare instances where you have absolutely no control over your current situation maintaining this attitude in the long term will cause you to relinquish control of your life.

So how can you deal with seemingly unfair situations?

You do everything in your power to try and get what you want. Let's say, for example, you apply for a job and someone who is less qualified than you gets it. This is a situation that you could potentially view as unfair. A good way to react to this situation is to continue to assume responsibility and try different means of getting the job. For example, you could continue to write to the employer expressing your belief of your suitability, you could offer unpaid internship to prove yourself, you could request feedback from interview and improve on the things where they thought you were weak, etc.

From the above example you can see that as long as you continue to assume responsibility there will always be more ways in which to act. Deciding that something is unfair is similar to accepting defeat, because you are saying to yourself that it is no longer up to you to get what you want.

I do, however, believe there are situations when it can be helpful to claim unfairness. It can be helpful to claim unfairness if it will cause you to get the result you want while remaining in line with your values. For example, if you are unfairly descriminated against in a job interview then I believe you can claim unfairness to the government, because this could help you get the job you want.

There are different ways in which the term unfair can be used. I want to be clear that I strongly believe it should be avoided when it becomes an attitude you have that causes you to give up control and responsibility. In my last example using unfairness is acceptable, because it is used to your advantage and you are still taking control of the situation.

Giving up the "life is unfair" attitude is another step you can take to accepting more responsibility for your life.

http://theresourcefulmind.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-responsibility-transcends-life-is.html
The Resourceful Mind