Part 4: Shifting Toxic Workplace Culture – Liberation From the Old Way by Virginia Robin

In Part 3, we learned that we have been trained to judge everything in our lives as good, bad, right or wrong. We are assigning values. When we face difficulties in our workplace environment, if we set out by judging a thing or person as unacceptable we are under the illusion that we are separate from that person or thing. Given that we are all one connected energy, this is not truly possible. It is this disconnected state that fundamentally feels negative, and so, the workspace feels negative too.

We learned that until we can radically accept all that is, right now, without judgement, we will continue to animate that negative energy. The situation that we continue to reject and label as being something ‘bad’, if repeated, will translate into a whole life that feels bad or problematic. From here we might sink into escapism in the belief that it is the only way out.

But Life is just an experience. Most of us don’t want to have any negative experiences, but the paradox is, that until we have fully accepted that we are creating everything in our lives for the experience of it, those experiences we are rejecting will remain in some form or another, awaiting acceptance by us, so we can become more of the whole being that we are.

In this next part, we take a look at a different way in which we have learned how to judge. 

This is in how holding onto the things we have judged as right or good also feels negative when we exclude other possible outcomes by adopting the need for control or certainty. 

When we try to control something, we are trying to hold onto what we believe will make us feel positive. Yet what we are doing is clutching onto an old identity, which we THINK is what we want. Identities are formed from past experiences which can also keep us stuck in the past.

For this, I like to use the example of baking a cake. If the cake flops, we become disappointed because we expected it would look like the magnificent cake in the recipe book. For the cake to be a good or right cake, we think it must turn out a certain or expected way. 

In our disappointment, we might want to blame the oven or the flour, or even ourselves as hopeless cake bakers. That is a choice we might make based on our own programming of what so-called good cakes must look like. 

Why did we get the idea that the cake must look a certain way? 

Again, I will revert back to our programming – our beliefs or personal rules. We were taught that we must look or behave in certain ways to be approved of by our tribes. If we behaved in the ways our tribes, our parents, teachers, peers and the other influential people in our lives trained us to behave, then to our young minds, this approval, not only meant survival, but also meant love. 

This is the way we were trained to GET love – like it is something that must be achieved or earned. This love was not true love, it was conditional love. Do this or that and we will love you. 

So, if I bake a cake that the tribe says is a good cake, then I live up to their expectations and they too judge me as good, or loveable.

We then try to control things around us so that situations turn out good, right or successful. We want people to behave a certain way, we want the right partner, the right career, the perfect family and so on. We have been taught that when we ‘have it all’ our way – which is really society’s way, then we will be happy.

We all want to feel loved.  

This is what we have been taught to believe is what love looks like. Again, the funny thing is many of us believe love is something we have to earn or achieve. The hidden truth is, you do not have to earn or achieve love. You need DO nothing. 

Love is a state of being not a state of doing. You are it. You are the energy of love. You simply have been trained by the tribe to believe otherwise and that you must earn it, by living up to the expected standards set for you by others.

If we look at our cake, the more unifying and positive response is to say I accept the cake, the workplace, or any other situation in my life absolutely as it is. I am the creator of it based on my belief system as I am presently, and I let go of any expectations of what a cake baked by me or tribes or others should look like.

This focuses up on what we have been taught to believe is good or the right way to live, to the exclusion of all other things. It relates to the previous idea, in that if you say this way is the only right way, then you are rejecting all other ways of being or doing your life. 

A fun little exercise here is to ceremoniously write the words ‘should’ ‘ought’ and ‘must’ on a piece of paper and then tear up or burn that piece of paper. You do not need those words.

The takeaway from this is all about liberation from the expectations and obligations imposed upon you by others. 

We are here to create our unique experience as individual aspects of the one energy. The key word there is unique. If you bake your cake based on the rules of others, then you bake their cake and not your own. That’s all fine. Nothing matters in the truest sense because all creations are perfect. The one energy, which is you, loves you and is pleased with your creation no matter what. 

In our final part next month, I will give an example of how this works in ‘real’ life.

Virginia Robin is a modern shaman and Peace Consultant. As a former practising lawyer, she understood that traditional methods of problem-solving are neither natural nor sustainable. She helps bring workspaces to a more coherent and peaceful state. To book an initial FREE consultation on bespoke solutions for your team email her at: virginia@consciousbcg.com. Or visit www.consciousbcg.com for more information.