There’s a very simple equation to making someone feel insecure.
I see it all the time when I'm working 1:1 with people, and a while back it hit me square in the face too.
I'd been invited to give a talk about the work I do for organisations, helping staff with stress and overwhelm, and was on a Zoom call with someone, ascertaining the lie of the land, in advance of working out what I was going to offer them.
One of the natural questions to ask therefore was,
“So who’s likely to be in this meeting?”
And that’s when the insecurity-inducing equation reared its head. It goes like this:
That’s it! Pure simplicity.
This is all that’s required for the mind to take that and run with it, filling in all the gaps and creating a massive, anxiety-inducing story about what’s going to happen, in a future it’s making up, but can never experience.
😫
In a way, a little piece of information is worse than no information, because it gives the mind a jumping-off point that sounds real and concrete – data points to string together with its nonsense.
So as I was being told about all the important-sounding roles held by the people who'd be in the room, the Giles Ego Construct 📦—which, if you remember, thinks that it has to deliver the presentation 🙄—starts cacking itself and I had to stop this person…
“Hang on, hang on, stop. I’ve heard enough. Do you have any idea what my mind’s doing, right now?!”
So, what are the implications here?
1️⃣
Well, the first is for when this next happens to you. You now know what’s going on. You know what your mind is doing with the insecurity equation.
And you know that it’s the source of the anxiety, not the future event (which hasn’t even happened, and may never happen)!
You can completely discount it.
2️⃣
The second is for when you’re with someone else who has this happen to them. You might be the one giving them just a little piece of data about a future event, or it might be someone else. (It happens all the time, it’s part of life, and work.)
And now you can be mindful of what their mind is doing with the insecurity equation as well… so if they look a little like a rabbit in the headlights, you’ll know why, and can offer your support.
Knowing how stuff works means we don't have to be freaked out by it.
There we go – it's in the workplace too:
“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”
~ Sydney Banks
💟
Giles
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