POLITICS! I hate politics.

Everywhere.

The office, the club, family, friends. Any organization has politics.

You can’t escape it.

There’s always a pecking order. It’s nice to be at the top but we all experience different levels. Often finding ourselves knocked on our ass.

I asked a friend of mine the other day how she deals with the politics of an organization we both belong to. Helen (not her real name) is always confident and carries on with her volunteer work unscathed by anything that’s going on with the political powers that be.

I am a *Life Member and have been with this organization for years. Some years we have officers who are wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful and gracious human beings who bring value and some years we have officers who are small minded people who do nothing but turn the place upside down. These are the times when I just want to throw my hands up in the air and say, “I quit!” “Who voted for these people?!!!!!”

It feels like they are working against me instead of with me.

Why?

Because if you do something and you do it well, there are always going to be some folks who want to see you fail. They’ll help you do it too!

I get fed up with that mentality sometimes and it eats away at me.

You may have noticed that I have to work REALLY HARD to stay positive. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s easier to be lazy and let the negative stuff occupy my head than to make an effort to think about the good things, to ground myself and force the negative stuff to leave my mind.

So I asked Helen how she does it. She told me that if she allowed what people say about her to affect her, she’d go crazy. LOL! She keeps in mind the people who need our services and why we do this. Our work is important outside of ourselves. She says to hell with the rest. She does what she does.

Good advice.

Well obviously, I’m allowing it to affect me and I’m going crazy. =) I think I go through this cycle every few years with this organization. I am the editor of their quarterly newsletter and the web site administrator so I am very much involved and I do my job well. There is a very small handful of people who are not happy about it and do not wish me success but if I worry about what they think then it’s making me hate what I do and I LOVE what I do. I should do what I do and to hell with the rest. Right?

My work is important to those who are in need of our services. I know that. (But still need to be reminded) It’s outside of my ego. But I still allowed other peoples’ insecurity to stimulate MY desire to be accepted and appreciated. I’m NOT the important one here, my work IS. I can be such an idiot when I let people get to me.

Helen is right. She’s the person I always go to when I need to whine. She always sets me straight and gets me back on my path. It’s important to have someone like Helen in our lives to pull us back or slap us silly when we begin to blubber. (I don’t mean that literally.) <grin>

I watched Sarah Palin on SNL and was thinking about how I even ranted about her. I gotta hand my respect to that woman for facing up to all of the crap everyone has thrown her way.

Politics are just plain nasty. It doesn’t matter if it’s at home, your workplace, organizations you belong to or your group of friends. It can get ugly and it takes a real strong, confident person to take it all with a grain of salt and let it roll right off their backs. I admire that in a person and I am going to work towards being that kind of person.

I’m still a supporter of Obama for President but I have to admit, I’m likin’ Sarah a lot more as a person. I thought she did well on Saturday Night Live. Yay! Sarah! You go girl!

* Life membership was gifted to me for all of my work for this organization. I am honored to have received this and the last thing I should do is second guess myself, but it happens. =)