Dear Madeleine,

I was let go from my last job due to a massive reorganization. I didn’t like it, but my entire department was eliminated so I didn’t take it personally. I got a new job soon afterward and I like the job and the company a lot.

I have been in my new position for more than a year and have recently started to hear rumors about restructuring. I have a growing anxiety about losing my job again. This is not reasonable because I feel pretty secure here, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

I don’t normally experience a lot of anxiety. It’s very unpleasant and I would love to know how to stop feeling this way. Any thoughts on this would be helpful.

Obsessing

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Dear Obsessing,

Anxiety is indeed unpleasant; I am sorry you are grappling with it. I do have thoughts, but before I share them, a caveat: I am not a trained mental health professional. I am only a coach with some tried and true principles and some lived experience. Therefore, it is my duty to advise you to consult a therapist if none of my ideas are useful and your anxiety continues to worsen. The only reason I’m not suggesting you immediately consult a therapist is because you don’t historically struggle with anxiety and you haven’t mentioned that it is getting in the way of your doing a good job. Anxiety is not a pattern for you, and it is not yet keeping you from functioning.

Now, to the promised thoughts.

Anxiety, at least a little, can be useful. The key is to leverage anxiety to fuel success—to run it. And not let it run you.

I have two categories of tips to share with you. One of them is neuroscience research so that you can understand what anxiety is and learn to befriend it. The other is standard career-building wisdom, or ways you can use anxiety as fuel.

Here is what we know about how our brains work. The brain is a prediction machine and its job is to keep us alive. When hard or challenging things happen, the details get encoded into our brains as known threats. The part of the brain where threats are recorded (the limbic system) cannot tell time; therefore, it makes no distinction between the past and the present. And it is emphatically not known for being reasonable. It is kind of like a big, dumb gorilla who is assigned to be your bodyguard and can’t tell a real threat from something that looks a lot like a threat but isn’t. To your gorilla guardian, the idea of restructuring equals “I am going to lose my job, starve to death, and die alone in the street.” It isn’t his fault; it is simply what he knows based on experience and watching the news (and, in my case, reading way too many novels). So he needs to be told to calm down and chill out.

The way to get the reasonable part of your brain to manage the gorilla is to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness can be defined as noticing and paying attention to your thoughts and feelings with curiosity and without judgment. It is a skill and does take practice, but you don’t have to even be good at it for it to make a difference. When you notice feelings of anxiety cropping up, you can say to yourself, “Wow, isn’t that interesting, here is that anxiety again. I wonder what that might be about? Maybe it has something to do with the word restructuring. Hmm. Or not. I wonder what it’s about? Might I be anxious about something else?” And so on. Essentially, you can talk yourself off the ledge and get yourself back on an even keel.

Another technique is to indulge your anxiety and do what I call “worst case scenario” thinking. That goes something like this: “Oh, here comes that anxiety again. Arg. Gosh, it feels gross. I think I might be feeling anxious because there is talk of restructuring—and the last time that happened, I lost my job. So there is a chance, even though I don’t think it will happen, that I could lose this job. So, okay. What if I were to lose this job? Would that be the end of the world? No. I have proven to myself that I am perfectly capable of getting another job—in fact, I could even get a better job than this one.”

The bottom line is that you probably are not going to end up living in your car. And the reasonable part of your brain knows that.

One certain way to focus your brain away from the perceived threat is to focus it toward things you can do to ensure that you remain valuable to your current organization. This is where you can apply standard career-building practices. You might ask yourself:

• Am I crystal clear about what my boss’s goals are? Do I know what matters most to them? Do I prioritize my work according to those goals and priorities?
• Do the people I work with see me as reliable? Relatable? Caring? Engaged? Consistent? Responsible? If not, where might I put some attention to change any impressions that might be hurting me?
• Am I as helpful to my teammates and the people our department serves as I could be? Do people see me as someone who goes the extra mile with a good attitude?
• Do I go out of my way to volunteer for extra events the organization sponsors?
• How might I exceed performance expectations? Can I get ahead of deadlines? Can I improve the quality of my work? Is there a way to influence my peers so that we improve the outcomes expected of us?
• Do I take the initiative? When I need help solving a problem, do I have some solutions to propose? Do I see opportunities for our department to provide even more value than we already do?
• Are there any new skills I might learn, or any that could be sharpened, that would make me even better at my job? How might I learn a new skill or upgrade one I already have?

People who think this way are the least likely to end up on the cut list when reductions need to be made. And I hate to tell you this, but most successful people are partially driven to excel and achieve by the terror of being judged and found wanting. It is the double-edged sword of anxiety: a little can be a huge contributor to performance; too much will prevent us from doing anything at all.

For goodness sake, please don’t attempt all of these, or at least not all at once. If one of these ideas jumped out at you as a no-brainer, try that one first. At worst, it will keep your mind busy with something positive and give you less time to ruminate on negative possibilities.

Have cozy chats with the sweet-but-not-very-bright gorilla who has your best interests at heart and tell him to take a nap. Try worst-case scenario thinking. Seek ways to make yourself irreplaceable to your team and your boss. Focus on what’s working well and make it work even better.

And breathe. Two counts in, four counts out. Ten times in a row. Five times a day.

You are going to be okay, Obsessing. Regardless of what happens.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

This new capability has given learning, leadership, and talent development professionals added insight into ways to bring out the best in people by identifying what lights up different areas of the brain.

Ready to take the plunge and learn more about this fascinating new field? Here’s a short list of books that will help you get up to speed.

The Owner’s Manual for the Brain by Pierce J. Howard

This book provides a great overview and is an encyclopedia on all things having to do with your brain. It is very well organized, super clear, and chock full of resources including additional reading and websites. Content includes nice coverage of brain basics, human development, wellness, learning, creativity, and more. If you only have one book on the brain, this should be the one.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky

More than just a charming cover with cavorting zebras, this book focuses on the toll that modern-day stressors are taking on our brains and our bodies. We all know about the fight-or-flight response—but what we don’t know is that our brains can’t tell the difference between a grizzly bear charging toward us and a cranky boss. As a result, many people in today’s organizations are in a constant state of alarm. Sapolsky is down to earth, funny, and gifted at helping the layperson understand the ins and outs of managing our own brains under stress.

The Mind and The Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley

An early entrant into the neuroscience fray, this book is a valiant attempt to help us understand how we can harness the power of our brains to improve our quality of life. Schwartz, a UCLA psychiatrist, and Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, look at new treatments being developed for brain trauma and dysfunctions and what it teaches us about the brain’s ability to adapt.

Your Brain and Business by Srinivasan Pillay

I had the great good fortune to meet Dr. Pillay, and there simply isn’t a more interesting or kinder person. He has about 90 irons in the fire at any given moment but has somehow found time to write several books. This one, focused on leadership and workplace issues, explains how brain processes affect behavior and how knowing this is helpful to leaders. Dr. Pillay is often—if not always—able to express complex concepts in a way that a person with a normal IQ can get them.

Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney

I stumbled over Baumeister and Tierney’s writing in The New York Times Sunday magazine and it rocked my world. They explore and explain the notion of decision fatigue, which is extremely important to know about because when our ability to think properly is exhausted, we are unaware of it. When our muscles give out, it is obvious to us—but when our brains give out, it is less apparent. When that happens, we can unwittingly make terrible decisions, lose self-control, and do things we regret simply because we are tired. This book will help you understand the fundamentals of self-management.

Your Brain at Work by David Rock

Rock is a pioneer in the area of putting neuroscience discoveries together with leadership research. He claims the coining of the term neuroleadership and has a training and coaching organization devoted to same. His book is a fun read if not an entirely easy one—he uses a theatre metaphor with different parts of the brain represented by The Director or Actors. This metaphor is especially relatable to some (like me, a former actor) and not so much to others. Rock’s most notable contribution to the field is his acronym SCARF, which represents dimensions that the brain is particularly sensitive to: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.

Social by Matthew Lieberman

Lieberman is extremely accessible in person. His book is somewhat less so. Written by and for people with advanced degrees, it can be a slog—but his research is important. He and his wife, Naomi Eisenberger, have focused on the science of why humans are so dependent on each other for their well-being. The two have proposed the scientific underpinnings for the truth that “no man is an island.” For a quick taste of their critical work on why rejection hurts so much, click here. Lieberman’s book is for the nitty gritty reader.

That’s my list—what would you add? What have been your favorites? Please do share in the comments section below.

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.