I am not coping with my "failure" this month at work.

I’ve worked in toxic workplaces, and they do make you feel like you’ve been gutted. My suggestion would be to take a day or two off and pamper yourself. If you feel lousy, your not going to be productive anyway, so get away and take care of you for a little while. Even if it’s just for a day or two, it helps. Take as much time as you can to recharge. Going in to that environment day after day is not going to help you step back and evaluate your choices.

I would suggest finding an avocation from which you can get satisfaction. No one can be at the top of their game always. If you have some other activity which you find fulfilling, then your job will not be sole arbitor of your self esteem.
Also, accepting that you are not always going to be the top producer in the company can take the pressure off you. The best work environment comes when everyone is working for the good of the whole, and not in strict competition with each other. How did your company do in general this month? Did the whole company have a bad month (in which case everyone has a share of the ‘failure’) or was it just you (in which case, you can take consolation in knowing your bump in the road didn’t bring the company down)?

I dont often advocate walking away from your problems, but no job is for life. I agree with @Adirondackwannabe that some time away would be a good thing, allow you to have some space & put work back in its rightful place…. very few jobs are worth worrying about when your not actually there.

@Adirondackwannabe @TheJoker I disagree in this case. The company is only six months old. If it was a long established firm, then I would agree. But you can’t take vacations if you are trying to launch a company. But you don’t have to have all your emotional eggs in that basket. You are bigger than your job.

You will be fine again this month. Everyone has a bad month or a bad time once in a while. Yours is only looming large, because of the bad office environment. Reassure yourself of all those past good months.

Reassure yourself that you will do well again.

Don’t let the negative influences at the office get you down.

My own opinion (although all of the opinions above also seem valid, and I could equally well argue any one of them) is that you’re taking this far, far too seriously. You’re “identifying” way too much with this job, and too deeply tying yourself to it. It’s a job. It’s just a job. It’s not as if your life depends on how well you do this month, next month, or if you ever lead production again. It’s a job.

What would happen if it were taken from you completely? If that thought keeps you up at night, then you seriously need to dissociate from this in some way.

I like my job. I’m pretty good at it. I wouldn’t want to lose it. (Which is what I’ve said about, oh… the last five or six jobs that I’ve had and lost or quit.) It’s just a job; it’s not your life.

I don’t think a day or two will break the company. Yes startups are a bear, but no one is going to miss someome for a day or two.

I know how hard it is when someone like us starts to get down on ourselves. We start judging (badly, of course), and pretty soon, if we don’t stop the cycle, we have convinced ourselves we are the worst, most useless person on earth, who probably shouldn’t even be on earth.

Ok, so I’m not very good at this, and I probably shouldn’t even be trying to explain it because I can’t do it, but here goes:

From what I understand, these ideas and judgments we make about ourselves are just thoughts. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it seems that “thoughts” are not us. They are somehow separate from us. Which means they don’t reflect on who we really are. In your case, the idea that you are no good because you just had a bad month is just a thought. It’s not you. It’s just some nearly random thing your brain came up with.

The idea, then, is to separate yourself from your thoughts. In this way, they have less power to affect you. One way of doing this is in a kind of three step way. FIrst, it’s “I’m a failure.” Second you add one step between you and that idea that you are a failure. “I think that I am a failure.” So you notice it’s a thought, not a state of being. Third, you distance yourself from the thought: “I notice that I am thinking that I am a failure.”

With each step, you get farther and farther from that original thought. You start to notice that it’s just a thought, and I guess, that makes it easier to let go of the thought.

I like this metaphor. You’re driving down the road. You see something on the side of the road and you look carefully at it, and all of a sudden, boom! You’ve crashed into an oncoming car and died, because you weren’t paying attention. You have to pay attention to your life. You have to be present. You can’t be watching all the irrelevant scenery on the side. Not while you’re driving, anyway.

So you let your focus be on what’s in front of you and what you are doing at this moment. Your peripheral vision might catch a general impression of what you are passing, but really, it doesn’t matter. It’s just scenery. It’s just thoughts. If you stay present—i.e., focused on what you are doing, and not thinking all these “just thoughts” about judgments on what you have done, then you don’t get caught in that spiral down.

Exercise can help you do this. An engaging activity can help you do this. Being with people can help you do this. Even meds can help you do it.

You don’t have to stop the judgments; you just work to let them go; to not give them so much importance—an importance, I might add, that they don’t even deserve.

So it’s a work in progress. I’m trying to learn it, too.

@wundayatta ty