The Secret

Oftentimes a person can become jaded in his or her profession and/or trade as time goes by. One will tend to lose the desire and focus at one's particular job due to small or big things in his or her workplace. For a person cynical side will gradually emerge and take one's personality in a totally different direction. In a way, that particular person will slowly go "blind" as one's cynical side takes over and completely covers up his or her vision. If you think about it, every person has traveled down that path before but never really stayed that long enough to become that person you never wanted to be.

When it comes to one's profession, there will be politics involved that will, in some way, rear it's ugly head. One such aspect is in the working relationship between employees and/or bosses/supervisors. Over a period of time, one can witness the politics of start to develop as certain cliques or groups form which can divide a so called cohesive unit. These factions can have an all out battle of words John McEnroe style, in which people start to talk behind each other's back. Inevitably, it can get to the point of becoming a proverbial tennis match of he said, she said, trading shot after shot.

There will always be promises made concerning changes made in different areas in one's job. But as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. For the veterans, that have been there the longest constantly hear time and time again that things will change but they never do. For those that are rookies, they hold on to that sense of hope but for those that have been there before know only to believe when he or she see it. In any case, a person can be a witness to so many broken promises that anything that seems too good to be true is often considered an April Fools joke.

The basis of a strong cohesive workplace is measure but it's strong leadership. If you have strong leadership plus plus strong employee committment it equals out ot a better working atmosphere. Let me ask you this question, have you ever worked or been in a placethat defined both strong leadership and employee committment? One can sometimes feel like Indiana Jones as he or she is looking for the proverbial holy grail. One just has to have hope because even though it is hard to find, one's holy grail is out there, you just have to look hard.

In retrospect, in life there are times where each of us are fed up and had enough. About two weeks before Hurricane Ivan was going to hit the Panhandle, I seriously contimplated quitting the Youth Center because of the politics and basically just feeling burned out. It took a Hurricane to open my eyes and it gave me three reason to not quit. Reason one is I wanted to see my friends again and reason two is personal and basically coincides with reason three which I missed "my kids." In the end, the secret for longevity in any profession is that you got to love what you do, if you don't then you have to move on.