Feeling in Organizations

 Working in organizations and groups can be quite the learning experience. One of the key things I am learning in my volunteer and working life is not to take criticism (real or imagined) personally, but rather to see it in the context of the organization's goals. To function in a workplace or an organization is literally to perform, socially and emotionally. I believe that emotions function forever in the context of organizational goals or wider social circles. While the latter shape what kinds of feelings are allowable in what contexts, the former are always sites of motivation.
   To be in part of an organized society (whether a community, a family or workplace) is to feel within it and to be influenced in turn by the rules of that society. For example--well, let's put it this way: if I am not having any feeling for working life, I will hardly have the motivation to go to work. Attendant with being in an organization are feelings of indebtedness, belonging and obligation.  If, on the other hand, in a hypothetical universe, everyone were allowed to live in comfortable caves (isolated from one another) and were magically fed through sun energy, they probably would have feelings that are simply not governed by organized life. In that case, many people might even resort to following flights of fancy, since there is nothing collectively keeping them grounded in work or relationships.
  To take things too personally, I think, is to take there to be a self that exists outside the function of social organizations. Yes, something "feels" that is independent of society, but at the same time, that something is not a separate individual. It is always in flux and shifting. If I am dwelling on the feeling of "I don't belong here" or "I am making so many mistakes", I lose sight of the fact that belonging and making mistakes are both social constructs which only exist in the context of social and organizational goals. They don't in any way reflect an enduring self. This is why it's probably not productive to believe that failure to adapt to an organization is a reflection of a "self".