Hi J,
I am constantly drawn to any reading requests, where I feel that I can be of some assistance and guidance to a valued member and friend. Yours just happens to be one of these.
Your question was mainly centred on whether or not your current working environment is a "good one to be in".
That very much depends on exactly how you interpret the meaning of the word "good".
This month's reading is very much like a politician, in that like a politician it tends not to give either a simple or straight forward answer.
It is not because it is trying to avoid giving you an answer, but it is instead a case where what the answer eventually turns out to be is likely to be highly dependent on how you personally define what is good, and on the other hand what is not so good.
This equally applies to your relationships with either the company which you are currently working for, or those with your work colleagues (the people whom you work with and with whom you may be experiencing interpersonal conflicts with on an almost daily basis, leading to you requesting this reading).
If good means to you that there will be no further interpersonal conflicts from now on, and that you will not be further challenged in the way in which you will need to compromise and make your expectations about human behaviour more realistic than they presently are, your working environment during the next six months covered by this reading will NOT be that type of good, although it could turn out to be a better one if you take certain practical steps to keep you from doing or saying something in a moment of anger and frustration, that you could quickly and easily live to regret doing or saying, but the damage has now been done. It cannot then be easily reversed? One you have done or said it, you cannot then go back and change it to something less threatening, or make out that it never happened.
Often the best route to take in trying to deal with a problem is not the easier option. In the short term or immediate future it might look to you to be the best approach, but further down the line with the luxury of insight you will be forced to realise that often the longer term consequences of what only appeared to be the best way out or around a problem, can all too frequently turn out to be anything but the easiest and best choice.
What only appears to be the easier option if you are feeling uncomfortable continuing to work for that boss or with those people is to cut your losses and run towards getting a job somewhere else, or becoming self employed. If you were your own boss and were only responsible to yourself if your business falls flat on it's face, at least you would no longer need to deal with the insecurity of your position with a company, or have interpersonal conflicts with other workers, some of whom may be in positions of authority above you.
But your reading makes the important point that although this might be upsetting and uncomfortable for you in the short term, if you do not learn to deal with such issues in a mature and balanced manner NOW, then you may have to learn the same valuable lessons at some later time, and that they are likely to be even more difficult and challenging when compared to what these were. And because these lessons and challenges were specifically designed to ultimately make you a stronger and more confident person within yourself through first hand experience, these valuable learning opportunities will be lost.
Now if you are being repeatedly intimidated, bullied, abused or feel that the situation is especially unbearable, and you have done everything you feel you can to make them stop treating you this way, then it is not the purpose of this reading to make you feel guilty if you think enough is enough, or to force you to just put up with it indefinitely.
How long has this been going on, and what practical steps have you already taken before now to fix things between you, the company or your fellow workers? The answer to that question is for your eyes only. It is included only to make you examine more closely with regards to determining whether you feel that the easier way out would be in your own longer term best interests.
If in contrast "good" means what is felt to be in your best long term interests for your optimum growth and development as both an individual and "social animal" (can't find a better term than this to describe the strong human need for social interaction with others of the same species as your own), then with the extreme exceptions I mentioned above your reading is telling you not to immediately take the easier way out that may turn out later to have been the worst one in either this or future jobs you may have.
If "good" means that staying the course and working with your feelings in a constructive manner during the next six months will give you valuable lessons and first hand experience which could stand you in even better stead in the future as a stronger and more confident individual who is more assertive instead of always being aggressive and not automatically go out looking for trouble where it may not necessarily already be, between now and the latter part of January 2012 is looking
PRETTY GOOD (BTW pretty is the more polite and sanitised form of the word which I could have substituted for it, but decided at the last moment not to because it could unintentionally offend some of the more nervous members) from where I am standing.
I commend these insights to you as being worth considering in some depth, BEFORE and NOT AFTER you unknowingly burn your bridges behind you with the company or your fellow workers.
Whatever energies you presently put out towards your boss and work colleagues will eventually be returned to you many times over, either during the next six months or alternately well into the future.
Either in this current job, or instead in a future one where you may eventually come up against identical or even worse problems than the ones you are facing now, but not having the benefit of these lessons which you are being presented with, you will be no better or perhaps worse off as a result.
All of this of course is easier for me to tell you, than for you to do it.
EoT
