The Chanting Typist: Is Collective Consciousness Striking Morale In the Workplace?

(Image: Jack Layton's Final Words)

The conversation recently came up about the morale of employees. It seems that there are a lot of people working who simply don’t have the motivation to perform at their best capacity on the job. They are unhappy, they work slower, they may even have a sour attitude towards their bosses, their coworkers, and if they are in customer service, unfortunately, it is displayed onto the customer. It’s a vicious cycle. The mood being projected is being circulated like a revolving door – enter the lower vibrations until it reaches everyone in range. How can it be stopped? Better yet, how can we boost our own energy to one that vibrates on a more positive level? We need to filter and purify the energy around us that serves as the collective consciousness.

First, it is important to recognize some of the reasons at the root of overall job dissatisfaction. I look at the big picture and see it has been fueled by all kinds of contributing factors that began to take place in the late 1990’s. So much has been thrown into the simmering pot until it finally reaches its boiling point. Must we wait until the pot boils over in order to do something about it? That’s usually the popular course – people do not take action until the breaking point has been reached; until something drastic occurs that sets people in motion to act. Yet, here we are collectively falling prey to the effects of the crisis happening all around us, still. Let’s visit part of the past that I feel brought us here and take a look at the bigger picture together:

9/11 – can’t speak about it enough; we will never forget;

War – fighting terrorism, fighting for reasons that government led us to believe were necessary for the defense of our national security, but rather turns out the raison d'être was greed and politics;

The Housing Bubble – housing prices soared, uncensored loans, market crashed, homes lose value;

Unemployment – businesses laid off people to cut back; we see a trend in outsourcing to foreign countries, although some businesses opted to cut pay/salaries to save from laying people off;

Banks – it's no secret that the financial crisis was brought on by the banks funding bogus loans that eventually would make them even more money; it didn’t help that the government bailed them out when they should have all faced justice like the criminals within the 99% do;

That left…

The People – that would be the 99% who went to work every day to live the American Dream, raising a family, paying their bills and believing that the banks would help them, somehow, reach the dream; those who lost it to 9/11, or war, or the housing bubble, or unemployment, or to the banks, or to all of it… were left.

Nothing in life is to be feared,

It is only to be understood.

-- Marie Curie

This is only the tip of the iceberg touching on these events, in my view, which led to where we are now as a whole. I'm not saying that every single person in the 99% is a direct victim of the above, but collectively we do become affected and it touches us all on a different level. Think about all those people who were going to work, who were motivated to get that promotion, to buy that home, to provide for their family and send their kids to college – they had hope. They thought that their 401k plans would be there for the long-haul so that they could enjoy retirement. They thought that purchasing their home was a wise investment worth working for. They thought that working long hours for a corporation would one day pay off.

The deception slowly started to rise to the surface, the web of lies unraveling, the transparency of the cheating banks getting away with fraud while people lost their homes, their livelihood, their dignity and their dreams. It has come to a point where people who are lucky enough to have a job, or re-enter the job market, are hanging by a thread. These people are trying to recover what they lost, trying to find hope in a new dream. Those once eager to go to work in the morning or at the beginning of a shift with promise for a brighter future were in a sense betrayed; now, they are waking up every morning to face a reality that for some a light at the end of the tunnel just isn't visible.

So, is it difficult to understand why the person behind the cash register is not greeting you with a friendly smile or why the employee is disgruntled at work for having to work longer hours with more duties and less pay – a pay that won’t cover the bills, the fuel, the food on the table? Perhaps they work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. Forget about retirement. Forget about sending their kids to college. Forget about buying that home – they probably had one and then lost it to a bank. All they want is to regain their life, their dignity, to get back a piece of that security they once knew. And what about their children who had to grow up watching their parents go through this? Suddenly their worlds fell apart, too. Now they are teenagers or young adults and lost because family ties were severed and they became disconnected, whether as a result of direct stress from the war, 9/11, loss of home, income or health or indirect pressure resulting from these events -- chaos erupted. No one was there to help because everyone in the 99% were sinking, while the 1% were too busy hanging on to their money. There is really no sense of security among people anymore.

Here we are now, at the culmination of unhappy, disgruntled, unmotivated employees. We shouldn’t complain. We should do something about it. We shouldn’t criticize. We should be compassionate. We shouldn’t castigate. We should motivate, provide encouragement and offer incentives for better job performance. We need to value people more, show them respect, and not expect more than we are willing to give in return. We need to begin training people to do service unto others, not seek self-gratification. It starts at work, at school, at home, at places of public domain -- it starts within each and every one of us.

It is time to think differently and begin lending a hand out instead of holding it back. It is no one single person’s fault. Wherever the string came loose, it has been done and grave consequences have been suffered by many. Let’s focus on bringing back harmony into the workplace by working together towards creating an environment of peace and respect and strive for a new fellowship that serves one another. People in positions of leadership and management should take the initiative to begin a movement in the workplace that will shine some light of hope. It begins with one person to focus on the good in order to change the energy and raise its vibration where instead of everyone falling to the level of lower frequencies, we rise collectively to meet those higher frequencies. And together, we will rise again and put some smiles back on our faces, and a new dream in sight. We cannot say that we are not affected; collectively we are, and collectively we can create change for a brighter tomorrow.