At The People Side, we’re looking closely at the main causes of suffering within people at work. Previously, we discovered how an unconscious mind generates inner suffering, and how a conscious mind can generate relief from it. Now, we turn the focus towards another powerful source of suffering that’s trending in the research: Attachment.

This article will explain that: Suffering is created, and alleviated, by certain natural patterns of the mind. As part of our natural cognitive development, something called the “Default Mode Network” strengthens, and from it, our capacity for suffering arises. The mind automatically creates stories and biases that distort how we see ourselves, others, and situations. When the story we cling to does not compute with our experience, we open ourselves up to suffering. The personal practices of elevated awareness and mindfulness directly alleviate the unconscious programming and suffering that arises in the mind.

In our last LinkedIn article, we shared our intention to investigate the impact of “suffering at work” and develop an understanding of how to alleviate it. To do this, we decided to explore three unique, but overlapping, dimensions of suffering that people encounter in the workplace – the suffering within people, the suffering between people, and the suffering happening around people. These dimensions are called out in our hypothesis, and we intend to reveal the nuances of each one individually in order to fully grasp the whole picture.

This year, The People Side will be launching an open investigation into the impact of suffering on human performance in the workplace. It has to be now, before we close the book on the last two years and label it all as an anomaly, or an outlier in the employment data. And it has to be our team because we feel uniquely called to help. Though we are not scientists, we are practitioners and people developers on a mission to untangle the systems of suffering and learn how to alleviate it for the good of society.