New boss today
Today is my new boss's first day.
How do I feel about this? Not quite sure yet.
I'm amazed at how, before he even started, people were upset, worried, etc. about this.
Some people seem excited, and I can understand that, it's something new, there's a lot of possibility here. But getting upset and worried? Why? In order to do that, you would need to be imagining worst-case scenarios. You would have to be putting effort into imagining that things that haven't happen WILL happen, and they will be bad.
When I imagine the future, I try to imagine things going well, but realize that I can't be completely complacent, that I'll still need be ready to react in case something goes wrong.
There's an interesting disconnect between the brain and the nervous system. While the brain can understand that a thought is just a thought, the nervous system will react like it's actually happening. If you imagine something stressful, your body will react like it's actually encountering stress.
If we compare a positive person, and a person imagining a negative situation in 2 scenarios, the results are pretty clear.
Negative future outcome:
Positive person is just chilling, waiting to see what happens. Negative person is being stressed out by how they imagine the stressful situation will play out. Then something stressful happens and both the positive and negative person are stressed out by it.
Positive future outcome:
Positive person is just chilling, waiting to see what happens. Negative person is stressed by imaginary situation. Nothing bad happens. No further stress.
In the negative outcome, the positive person gets stress out, that's natural… but the negative person gets stressed out TWICE!
In the positive outcome, nothing bad occurs… but the negative person still had to experience stress! They chose to make their life less awesome.
Another interesting thing about imaginary stress is the imagination itself. I don't know about you, but I know my imagination can come up with outcomes that are more horrible than anything that would ever actually happen to me.
Tags: imagination, new boss, stress
spudart said,
Yeah! I like your outlook. One of the keys is to know that you personally do good work. If you do good work, then you have nothing to worry about.
Perhaps the people who worry know they don't do good work and don't deserve their position. They worry about their lack of ability will be uncovered.
August 1, 2013 @ 10:21 am
Cactus Joe said,
Yeah. Good stuff. Worst case scenarios and fear keep a lot of people from fulfilling dreams. Next week I am probably going to take a new job, but it is only a contract through the end of the year. I am not stressing about the fact that I will be unemployed after that. It will be a professional development experience. I will gain new skills hat will help me find a new job. I need to proactively find a new job the whole time I am there, but I do that now, so not a big deal. I like being a free agent. The worst case scenario almost never happens. Just envision an apocalypse like in THE ROAD and everything seems pretty hunky dory.
August 2, 2013 @ 7:21 am