FORGIVENESS AND PERSONAL GROWTH (Posted 2010-03-19 22:42:17 by Ray Lopez) You hear it again and again: Forgiveness is one of the important pillars of human wisdom and even human happiness. Such talk is easy to discount if you've never had any real challenges before, and quite frankly I never really believed in the power of forgiveness until fairly recently. Last June, on the Monday after Father's Day, I decided to quit my job as a Lead System Engineer at a large financial services company in San Antonio. It was the culmination of 6 months of sheer misery for me, as I had stumbled into a nest of some of the most vile people I have ever encountered in my professional life. As it turned out, the whole company culture was one made up of "good ol' boy" networks. And if you were not fortunate enough to be deemed worthy to be part of one of these networks, then your co-workers and your managers simply made life miserable for you. You were actively shunned, humiliated, and made to feel as badly as possible. The canned response to a situation like this is, "No one can make you feel badly without your permission." I generally agree with this view, but there are sometimes when the old joke is true: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't really out to get you. My manager turned out to be a classic psychopath, of the sort with a very charming personal style, yet with no conscience or integrity whatsoever. Even with a Ph.D. in psychology, I failed to recognize this until it was too late. I fell out of favor with him, and that was magnified by the fact that I was also out of favor with the reigning in-group. From about March until June, 2009, each day at work was an exercise in subjugation and humiliation for me. I was slowly being phased out of all aspects of my team's operations, and nothing I did was ever good enough. Every month or so, my psychopathic manager would meet with me and give me his latest non-constructive opinion of what I had been doing wrong lately. On the Friday prior to Father's Day, we had one of these meetings and he told me that he was putting me on a "performance improvement plan." At this workplace, a performance improvement plan was simply a method used to begin the documentation process necessary to fire you within the next 3 to 6 months. After that meeting I called my wife and told her what had happened. We both agreed I was about to be fired. She was also deeply concerned about me, as I had been coming home every day deeply depressed for the past few months. I was earning a nice six-figure salary at this job, and I told my wife I should stick it out for these final months while we cut back our expenses and saved some money. She disagreed, and told me that I needed to quit immediately, and that we'd figure out the financial situation later. Over the weekend we discussed it further, and by Sunday morning I had made the decision to quit this job. It was a terrifying prospect, since my wife earned less than half of what I earned, and I had no other job lined up. But ultimately I decided that I had been wronged and that I just had to leave a toxic situation. That job had killed me emotionally and spiritually, and it was about to kill me physically as well. So, on the Monday after Father's Day, I go into work and await the arrival of the psychopath. When he shows up I sit down at his desk and tell him I'd like to give my 2 weeks notice. His answer: "OK, no problem." He told me they'd pay me for 2 weeks of work but that I would be leaving there today. As I cleaned out my desk, one of his henchgirls came by and asked me what I was doing. When I told her I had quit, it was obvious that she could barely contain her glee. A couple of hours later, after all the paperwork was completed, the psychopath escorted me to the exit, and we parted ways without saying a word. I had a tremendous sense of relief that day! That afternoon I started applying for jobs, and because God takes care of me, I found a job that Thursday. Yes, it paid much less than my old job, but it was a job nonetheless, one working with good people. For the next 3 months or so after I quit that job, I actually experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Sleepless nights, depression, and unexplainable bouts of rage. The rage I felt was sheer hatred and anger, because I had been treated so badly by people who were so blissful. The unfairness of it all made my blood boil. This whole experience taught me a lot of things. First off, I learned what it was like to work in a pathological corporate culture. I had been spoiled by working for companies like EDS and IBM. Sure, EDS and IBM had their problems, but for the most part my experiences there were very positive. Their cultures were one where creativity, collaboration, and professionalism were the rule, the exact opposite of this workplace I had just left. In order to grow as a professional, as a leader, and as a person, I had to experience a workplace where service, loyalty, honesty, and integrity didn't matter. The second thing I had learned from all of this was the power of forgiveness. I could have let my PTSD get worse, and let the rage build up, but that's something that would have ultimately done me in. That's what anger and hatred do to you. They eat you up and cause you to die from within. Meanwhile those that have wronged you have completely forgotten about you. As some friends said to me, "Why let those bastards live rent free in your head?" This is where I learned about the power of forgiveness, the power of letting go of your anger, and of letting go of the memories of your past wounds. By forgiving, you start the process of healing yourself, of learning from you past mistakes and of making sure that your anger and rage do not manifest themselves in some horrible way. I had to convince myself that I had simply fallen into a bad situation with some immoral people. Yes, they are immoral, but they're human beings, loved by God every bit as much as I am. Forgiveness is much more than just rationalizing what happens to you. It is an active process of detaching yourself from your pain, and replacing that pain with love for those who have hurt you. I can honestly say I have completed half of that process, namely detaching myself from the pain. I see it now as a set of valuable lessons learned, and nothing more. But I am still working on the part of replacing my pain with love for those who hurt me. I think that will take more time. And more prayer. In the end I'll be a better person for it, one who truly understands the power of forgiveness and one who has grown more as a spiritual being and child of God. -------- There are no comments on this post. To submit a comment on this post, email rl@well.com or visit us on the web [ http://ratthing.com ]. .