Inevitably when you get into a position where you are growing and out of your comfort zone, you are going to have days like this. Even if you have been in the workforce for many years, sometimes that only means that your problems are bigger and the impact of your decisions can be even more substantial. So – this episode applies to you just as much.

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Transcript

I have always heard things come in threes. My grandma used to say that all the time, and as it goes – within a two-day period, I heard three stories that sounded almost exactly the same.

Sometimes it is obvious when I need to cover a topic, just by the sheer number of people who are having the issue. I talked to two of my clients, who are in their mid 20s, about 25-26, or so. They are really just starting out on their professional career journey. Also, because so many people know about my career focused podcast and coaching, people tell me stories about women they know who could use career coaching all the time. (I am forever thankful for the referrals! Word of mouth is a powerful connector, no doubt!)

Let me tell you about all of these ladies. They are very intelligent and have an unbelievable work-ethic, are so interested in their careers that they sought out career coaching, and are already making nearly a 6-figure salary at such a young age. I tell you this to let you know – they are not lazy or weak. They are 100% pushing boundaries and willing to take on more and more every day. They are going to be a force in the world – heck, they already are.

Both the two I am coaching and the one I heard about had experiences this week where the weight of responsibility they have gained momentarily was so heavy, that they began to feel crushed under the weight and didn’t know what to do. In one case, they had been on a mission to gain this level of responsibility and had achieved it, and when a time came that they needed to make a call – one that could impact corporate revenue if it didn’t pan out, it felt overwhelming. In another case, due to the pandemic, the staffing at her corporate position had been reduced and was not back up to normal levels, even though it seems that the customer expectation had risen to pre-pandemic levels. This young lady told my friend that she goes to her car and cries on breaks and after work because she is exhausted, hungry, and extremely stressed. She wants to quit, but she cares about her co-workers and believes the company is trying to get the staffing up. The other one asked for an ad-hoc coaching session and was crying so hard at the beginning of our call because of the stress she feels. She is an engineer and project manager, and they had a deadline approaching and they were having technical issues and as the lead for this project, she thought they might miss the deadline and she was anxious about having to inform her boss.

Given me an amen if you can relate to what these ladies are going through. Inevitably when you get into a position where you are growing and out of your comfort zone, you are going to have days like this. Things will go wrong, staffing issues add tons of workload to others, and deadlines are definitely stressful – especially if you know other parts of the company are depending on your meeting your portion of the effort. The more experience you have in these moments, you will naturally find a way to manage yourself through them, and the older you get, I think many times – you gain perspective and realize what is worth getting stressed over and what isn’t. Even if you have been in the work force for many years, sometimes that only means that your problems are bigger and the impact of your decisions can be even more substantial. So – this episode applies to you just as much.

1. Assess what you BELIEVE about the situation and put it into perspective. If feeling overwhelmed at work is a pattern for you, it is likely that you are having limiting beliefs that are keeping you from moving forward. You might think that if you make a mistake, if you make a wrong call, if something goes wrong with a customer, that you will be seen as incompetent, not fit for leadership, or even that your job will be in jeopardy. Maybe you believe that leadership will start to question if you bring enough value. If you truly believe these types of things, when they are not true for your leadership – you know, they are not thinking these things at all – you will actually be wasting valuable time that you could be taking action to fix what is stressing you out in the first place. I know these things seem real in the moment, but the more often that you can question your beliefs in this manner, the more often you will be able to take action and move forward, and the less these kinds of thoughts will even enter your mind. Your confidence in yourself will grow and you will feel more in control of your own outcomes at work.

2. The importance of planning and then constraining your effort. If you have a really good plan, even when it starts to get off track, often it is off track because something on the critical path is delayed. Regroup and think, talk to a colleague, white board it out, then decide – what is the absolute most important thing you could do right now to get things back on track. Focus and constraint are often the key simplification you need to calm your mind. Just stop. Take a breath and think: What is the most important thing you could do right now - just do that, let everything else wait. What is urgent and what is important are usually two different things. As often as possible, work on the more important thing. Just because a squeaky wheel is in your ear and sounds urgent, does not mean it needs the grease right now. Unless the urgent thing is your boss, stick to thing that will give you the biggest jump forward.

3. Calm and clear your mind. Sometimes you will feel your emotions start to get the best of you. In these moments, have a plan to cope, to manage your mind. If you can have a few minutes to yourself, take a break, drink some water, go on a walk and think and process. Go grab lunch or coffee with a friend and talk it out. Like my clients did, call your coach if that is an option. The young lady with the understaffed corporation called her mom, and vented. Just get your emotion out in a safe non-judgmental way, which will help you process. Sometimes when you tell someone else what is wrong, it does not seem as bad. Of course, you can use methods we talked about in previous podcasts, such as short meditation, deep breathing, apps such as headspace etc. It’s amazing at how fast you can calm yourself just by getting a cold glass of water and doing some deep breathing.

4. You don’t have to know everything and you don’t have to hold all the weight alone. Especially to my clients who were struggling with major decisions they had to make this week, I reminded them of something I learned in the military… the concept of “accepting risk”. The only person who can “accept risk” in the military sense is the Commanding Officer or the Commander of a Specific Unit, as it pertains to their mission. Even a Commanding Officer can only accept the risk within the scope of their authority. So if something needs to be raised to a higher echelon, then there is a process for that. The person 3 layers down the Chain of Command in a military unit cannot “accept risk”. What does this mean to you? If there is something that needs to shift in priority or a decision to be made that could fix the problem, but it could also result in a negative impact to the overall mission – it needs to be elevated to the person who can accept the risk if things go wrong. In most cases, it is not the 25-year-old assistant project manager who is in charge of one portion of a a larger enterprise technical solution. It was so interesting, that for two of my clients this week, my advice to them was to get themselves together and to simply talk to their boss, telling them, they were at a decision point – “here are the options, the impacts, and my recommended choice.” They both thought they were expected to just “know” what to do and that if things went wrong, they could be fired. This was not something in the culture, this had nothing to do with their direct supervisors, it was just what they thought people who are successful should do. They just thought it was their job to make the right decision and when they knew what they wanted to do, but also knew there was a chance it could go wrong – it became very stressful for them. As soon as we discussed how to professionally raise it to the next level – they were so relieved. I talked to both of them after the fact and everything worked out just fine. They talked to their respective bosses, and provided recommendations, which were accepted and since they passed the risk decision up the chain of command at their corporation, some of their stress was relieved and they were freshly energized and able to move forward.

5. The importance of perspective. One way for these ladies to have had less of an emotional reaction would be to if they had stopped to think for a moment and then put it all in perspective. Often this is easier for a person with more experience or a person who is older. After living some amount of life, it is clear that most things are not going to end the world. Honestly, almost everything at work will not end the world. Well – I work for the US Navy, so decisions I make and things my team does could have an end result in someone living or dying, but I’d venture to say, this is not the direct case for a large percentage of corporate jobs. If you are doing your absolute best, along with your colleagues and team, most people are not even going to get fired when a mistake is made. Of course, it depends on the mistake, and the chain of command, and you know your company culture.

6. Keeping your slate clean. This goes along with focus and constrain. It will be easier to know what you should be working on to make the biggest difference, if you are very deliberate about the projects you agree to work on. This is not only at work, but all across your life. If you agree to lead the PTA, to help your neighbor paint their fence, to take your friends dog to the vet, and to host a church party at your house, inevitably – that is going to cause you stress at work due to commitments you have made outside the office. If your cubicle mate keeps asking you to help her learn how to do complicated things with Excel that she could google and learn herself or if you volunteer for all the extra duties at work too – you will start feeling like you can’t focus. If you are finding that you are overwhelmed and very stressed at work and you want to change – take some time to decide if there are some things on your plate that you need to share with someone else or just stop doing. Can you delegate some of them to someone else? If it isn’t going to directly move you or your most important project forward, then start saying no. Look at your home life. What are your priorities there? Same thing – if it is not one of your top 2-3 priorities, let someone else do it. Ruthlessly say no to everything else.

7. Take a preventative approach. When you are taking good care of yourself, sleeping 7-8 hours a night, eating healthy, staying hydrated, and exercising – you will feel it. When you aren’t and things start to go wrong, you are less likely to manage the issues at the top of your game. This is an obvious one and one that is 100% in your control. If you frequently feel ultra-emotional and out of control – see if you have been neglecting yourself. Remember life is a marathon. Do not burn yourself out by age 30.

8. Make a conscious effort to separate your self-worth from success and achievement. If you think that people only love you or that you only matter when everything is going right, when everything is going well – then you have work to do. It is exactly this mindset that will drive an overabundance of stress. Learn to have some grace with yourself and realize that you are worthy just because you are on this earth. You do not have to deliver a technical project to finally be deemed worthy. You just are. Sit with this reality and how you feel about this. Do you believe it? If not… this is one thing a great career coach can help you with.

9. Get a Coach. Just like #7, if you don’t feel worthy and if you can’t get the overwhelm in control – then finding a safe person to talk to who does not judge and is only there to help you move forward will be invaluable. Mentors and Friends can also help. Just talk to someone who is outside the situation and preferably someone who knows how to move forward in positions of heavy responsibility.

10. My final tip is pretty serious and it is 100% in your control. So, it is the most powerful tip I am sharing in this episode toady. When you are feeling overwhelmed, worried, doubt, or confusion in any situation. These are “indulgent emotions”. They are the chocolate, ice cream and sugar of the emotion world. When you indulge in these emotions, you are deciding to stay where you are, to remain stuck in place, to “buffer” and hide from the actions you know you need and even want to take. The problem is if you are doing something hard, which all things worth doing are usually hard, then sometimes it feels a lot safer to just be overwhelmed or worried about making a mistake. It feels safer to let someone else tell you what to do.

Feelings, like overwhelm, doubt, worry, and confusion seem important, and when you tell the story - you seem quite justified in feeling them on purpose. Many people would understand and be confused and overwhelmed about the situation too. But these feelings are the ones that keep you from taking the action you need and want to take. These emotions and the thoughts that cause them are the progress stealing excuses that will block your ability to amaze yourself with your leadership and decision-making ability. The way to stop indulging is simply to go on a diet from the thoughts and the feelings. Don’t allow these emotions to pretend to be necessary in your life anymore. Think of them like sweets in a candy store and pass them by. Seriously, make a decision today that you are on a diet – no more overwhelm, confusion, doubt, or worry. They are a waste of your precious time and energy.

From now on you accept that you chose a hard job, because you are capable of doing it. Yes – sometimes that means that you are going to have bad days, sometimes you are going to make a mistake, sometimes it is going to feel uncomfortable – and that is ok. Somedays you are going to cry. It is ok. Because you know what? Even if you stay in a safe comfortable quiet job, you are going to have bad days and cry there too. Life is a balance of good and bad emotion. So, step forward into your most powerful self. You can do this. The more responsibility you accept, the easier it will get. That is how you become a woman who is ready for more, for bigger roles, for leading large teams and organizations. You take on a hard job and feel the discomfort, learn to manage the stress, make decisions, move forward and that is how you succeed!