Fear And Platitudes
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
-Marcus Aurelius
We have all faced stress. Whether it was some external force outside of our control pressing in on us or the pursuit of something we really wanted, the feelings of anxiety, even flat out fear, are something we have all experienced and had to cope with. And you have to cope with them, otherwise they spiral out of control and destroy the healthy aspects of your life, like cancer attacks healthy cells as it takes over a body.
I am writing about stress today because I have some that I need to overcome. At my day job I hold the rank of Corporal. In May my workplace posted three positions to fill for the rank of Sergeant. Since then a fourth position has been created, with a fifth sure to be added by the end of the year as one employee has sustained a permanent disability which will prevent him from retaining his position, so it looks like five people will be advancing. It’s the first time I am eligible to test for this rank, and I submitted my letter of interest immediately. I always felt like it would take two or three tries to get promoted, but I knew that just going through the process would be a good experience and would help me to eventually succeed to the next level.
Frankly, from the beginning I never held any hope of success the first time I undertook this process. There are a lot of interested parties testing for very few positions, and education and longevity give some of the applicants a big advantage that I don’t enjoy at this time. Workplace politics also play a role, and while I am not on anyone important’s shit list at work, I am neither anyone’s favorite.
So with 100 applicants submitting letters of interest I was taking the whole process as a learning experience and not really devoting too much thought to it. On June 30, 59 of the applicants showed up for the first step in the three part process: the written examination. Five days later the results came in.
Of 59 testing, only 21 passed and I scored fifth.
It is now a whole different ball game. I actually have a chance at this, and whereas I felt absolutely no stress before as I was taking it as a learning experience, now I realized just how badly I want this. For the rest of the week this dominated my thoughts, as I made mental lists of who I thought they wanted to promote, thought about the remaining process and the necessity of nailing the last two steps to really be in the hunt. Still ahead was an oral examination, followed by an interview with the Director; a man who makes Gordon Ramsay seem like your favorite uncle in comparison.
I was stressed. One night my wife started talking about putting up a privacy fence she has long wanted and I snapped at her saying that my mind needed to be focused on what was ahead in the coming weeks. She responded in kind and now I had home stress on top of the work stress. At work I brooded about it, running scenarios through my head, convincing myself against it, then for it, then against it again. I saw that I had let a little fear begin it’s circular feeding pattern, and the fear itself was becoming the focus of my thoughts.
At this point I usually start throwing out platitudes and tell you obvious ways to deal with the problem, tying it into the focus of Connected Internet. I am not going to do that this week. We all have to confront our fear, and no amount of encouragement, no platitude, is going to provide you with a suit of armor that will make you impervious to it’s effect.
After the second day of stressing out about my situation I realized that my most important task wasn’t the rest of the process I was about to undertake, but managing my stress. It only took a couple of minutes of devoting my mind to the problem and I had my answers; they were there just below the surface the moment my anxiety began to run.
My mind was turning something positive into something negative. If I wanted to I could ensure failure by allowing it to continue, or I could recognize it and look at it from a completely different perspective. One that wasn’t driven by fear.
I realized I had nothing to lose. I went into this thinking it was no more than a learning experience in the first place. Now I had positioned myself to actually be in the running with a good performance on the written examination. There was no reason to think that I wouldn’t duplicate that performance on the oral examination. I have to make quick decisions all the time at work, and my instincts haven’t failed me yet. If I can deal with attempted assaults I can certainly handle a few questions from a board of people who don’t intend me any bodily harm. This is my job, I am competent, and I can do this.
The fear I had was never about that though. The last step was the Director’s interview. Most of us probably have the same feeling about interviews. You’re on and you ace it, or you’re not and oh well. This is only the most important conversation I have had in my life, no pressure or anything.
Obviously anxiety wasn’t going to help my chances, certainly not if I’m sitting there with my heart pounding, dry mouthed, perspiring and squirming in my chair. How do I go into something this important and not be a ball of nerves, brain frozen with anxiety?
I thought about it a little. Other than a completely understandable nervous reaction to an important event, what did that interview mean to me and my family? The prestige of success at something I wanted badly to accomplish. A position that I have desired since the day I started the job. An initial 6.5% pay increase, but a 20% increase at topped out pay scale from the rank I now hold. The chance to develop junior staff and hold a greater level of responsibility in a job I love.
I would be a fool to be anything but happy about this interview because of all it represents, and that’s exactly what I intend to be. I went in thinking this was only a trial run for later opportunities, and it turned into an opportunity. Even if I don’t succeed I can be happy that my first attempt went so well, and if I succeed, better still.
So I don’t have any platitudes for you today. No inspirational theme on how to make your blog better and more successful. I want to express thanks to everyone reading this for giving me a means to organize my mind and master my stress. I do have one generalization to make about stress and how to cope with it that I think holds true for all of us:
You have to turn the negatives in your life into positives if you want to succeed. This is doubly true of stress and fear. Fear destroys everything in it’s path, but all fear is of your own creation and can be conquered. You have to decide whether you are going to conquer your fear, or resign yourself to letting it conquer you.
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