10.08.09
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
At the end of my freshman year in high school, I asked teachers as well as friends to sign my yearbook. One of the nuns, my favorite who taught Latin, wrote: Jackie, don’t be such a worry wort!
I had no idea what a worry wort was, but a friend quickly explained that it was someone who fretted over just about everything. I protested a bit, but it was true. I worried about every grade, what people thought about me, whether they thought about me, whether I measured up and, if I thought I didn’t, how I could change to do so.
Like most folks, I look back on those years and wish that I knew then what I know now: You can’t do everything; you can’t please everyone and, frankly, you probably don’t want to.
But it took me a long while to get there.
As a young professional I fretted over work and if I made a mistake I was completely mortified. If a supervisor leaned into me at all about it I pretty much folded like a cheap card table. I tried to remain cool on the outside, but inside I was just a mess. And sometimes I made things worse because I was so nervous that I was constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if I was being watched, instead of concentrating on work. It didn’t help that I was sometimes taken to task publicly – as if I wasn’t chagrined enough to have made the mistake in the first place.
There’s an old saying: A jealous man can’t work. Well, neither can a nervous worker. A workplace study http://news.ufl.edu/2008/01/24/rude-workplace-2/ found that even mild criticism, especially delivered publicly, can affect productivity and creativity in the workplace.
“We found that even when the rude behavior is pretty mild, it impairs a person’s cognitive functioning and has spillover effects in how they treat their co-workers,” said Amir Erez, a professor of management at the University of Florida, who co-authored the study.
So how do you handle it when it happens to you?
Many workers find approaching the boss and trying to talk it over doesn’t usually solve the problem because the supervisor doesn’t want to be put on the spot about the behavior and is likely to find more fault with you – even if it’s largely bluster.
The challenge, then, is to find a way to shake it off and focus on being better at what you do. It may have just been a one-shot deal that won’t happen again. If it is a chronic issue, find a way to change the way you operate so that you can avoid making the mistake again. Whether it’s a mantra, changing your routine or finding out where the mistake occurred and setting up a system that flags the potential for it, figure out what you need to do and just do it.
Whatever you do, don’t let a mistake define you. Once you start looking at yourself as inept, or doomed, you pretty much are. Don’t let that nagging voice – your boss’ or yours – stay in your head. Think about what you do when you’re at the top of your game and figure out how to recreate that feeling – if only in your mind.
Create the environment you need to do your best work and don’t be a worry wort.
