You can't be two things-- the black hole.

A friend of mine commented on his co-workers yesterday. "I can't believe they are in relationships or have spouses at all. They are so mean!" We started to talk about how some people are mean at work while they are nice at home, and it got me thinking seriously about how wrong that really is.

Wrong? How?

Well, truthfully, you can't earn back points for your mean-ness at work by being nice elsewhere. Even if you manage to keep them separate (and I have yet to see someone really able to not have it spill over) you are still killing yourself each time you are an s.o.b. at work.

How?


Each time you are disrespectful, nasty, mean, or a jerk, you are putting stress on yourself. You may think you "feel better" from the outburst, but studies have shown people who do those types of things are three times more likely to have heart attacks.

In addition, there is no magic scale that balances against being spiteful or mean. Just because you are nice in one place, it doesn't replace the fact that you are mean somewhere else. And it begins to spill over, first maybe subtly, but then much more noticeably.

It is like a black hole. Once you are caught in the gravity well, you will spiral closer and closer inward toward the bad behaviors. They'll be nearer and nearer to you.

Let me give you an example. Long ago when I first was out of college I worked in a hospital. It was a nice bunch of nurses I worked with, but there was one problem- they all swore like sailors. Not at the patients, but in the nurses station, the lunchroom, anywhere out of earshot (and sometimes not) of the patients. Needless to say, after a few months I was swearing to fit in at work; however, I believed I wasn't swearing much at home. I truly didn't want to have that sort of mouth in my personal life. Finally, my husband looked quietly at me one day and said, "Do you know that's the third time in the last few sentences that you swore? What is going on?" I thought back over my comments and, aghast, I realized he was right. I wanted to stop.

In order to stop it, I had to stop swearing at work, too. If I didn't I would have spiraled back into that hole in another few months again.

This holds true for language, attitude, behaviors and ways of thinking. You can't segregate different ways of being into different parts of your life, they will creep out and wreak havoc on your relationships.

So your courageous work is to look at how you behave/think/speak in all areas of your life. Really consider if you want to be seen that way in other parts of your life. Imagine what would happen if it spilled over. What if your spouse saw you doing those things? How about your children? If you shudder at the idea, then start changing how you are so that you feel good about yourself in all situations.

If you can be congruent with yourself in all aspects of your life, you'll be healthier and have happier relationships.

Note: if you are struggling with and addiction, and you are fooling yourself into believing it has nothing to do with your family or kids, stop and get help. Addictions definitely spill over.