Dear Anita

Thanks for your comments.

Regarding the last point: No you haven’t understood me correctly. Or I haven’t explained it clearly enough for you to understand. What I mean is not the get excessive praise from others, but I want others to recognise and acknowledge the fact that I am content with my position in sales, I do not need to go higher up to become a doctor, accountant, or teacher etc. I need this validation as I have always been told that I should have done something better. Because my goal is not to go further up to sit in the office, say for example, to become the retail operations manager or finance manager, then I don’t want people to misund stand that that is my goal given that I’m performing well. I feel underachieved, because I have not found others that share the same values with me, who also think that it is indeed a good idea to be sales compared to medicine, I have realized that it is a cycle of negative thoughts and I need to break this cycle as well. I do not need to be praised, I know what I have achieved and I am content with what I have done, however I don’t want my achievements to be used against me due to jealousy. To me “recognition” and “achievement” are related to my ultimate goal, which is to find happiness, and as selfish as it might be, I hope to find others who also recognize the fact that money is not the most important thing and it is indeed possible to do something “less worthy of money” and be happy with where we are (and not be jealous of anyone, I rarely feel jealous, but a lot of people are jealous and that leads to bitterness). I hope you get what I mean as I am aware that the same words might mean different things to different people.

I guess for me, teamwork also means that we communicate and are able to work towards a common goal (or objective). Since Giraffe and I are equal in terms of our ranks then it makes sense for us to take directions from each other instead of that drama caused by them not following the manager’s instructions that would reflect poorly on me as I am only responsible for passing on the message and not doing the work for them. Again it could be something to do with my childhood experiences, but I do not want to take the fall for something that I haven’t done. I absolutely hate the fact that we have been unable to work well together. To me, teamwork is a collective effort and if someone is unable to understand that, and instead use excuses to put me down, then it is not my problem, I do not feel that I have misunderstood the word “teamwork”. I like to discuss things and I basically get along with most people at work. I simply cannot tolerate the fact that someone is blaming me, it could be due to their incompetence or them not taking responsibility for their actions. It does not mean that I have not taken the actions to examine what I have done as well, I learn from my mistakes and do better everyday. I do not like the fact that people use it as an excuse as I do value teamwork.