Failure is good for kids. So how do you raise a child who can fail and still be successful? You do it by building what scientists call “future-orientation.” Good parents teach their kids how to fail smart!
No one wants to be stressed out at work, but do we have a choice? We’re all being asked to do more with less, and do it faster. So stress is a natural reaction to high expectations and pressure.
Stress can cause burnout, employee turnover, frustration and anger around the office. But research suggests there may be ONE upside to work-related anxiety that might surprise you.
Stress might cause you to make more accurate decisions.
This is Your Brain on Stress
That’s right – it’s possible that people who feel anxious might be better judges of possible outcomes and problems, and therefore make better decisions. (In this interesting gender-study, for example, men in particular made very risky decisions under pressure, while women tended to take fewer risks and make more accurate judgements, even under the same pressure.) But men and women both might get more eerily accurate at making decisions the more pressure they’re under. From hitting high notes while singing to hitting targets at the gun range, stress seems to correlate with precision.
Wonder why that is? Me, too.
It may have something to do with stress making us more pessimistic. For years we’ve known that pessimists make more realistic, accurate predictions about the future than optimists. Optimists can tend to think big and envision the future positively, so their expectations of the future aren’t always realistic. It’s possible that under anxiety, we all get a little more pessimistic, and because of that, our accuracy gets better.
Being the Boss of Stress
For whatever reason, it happens. Stress makes you more accurate. So… what are you going to do about it?
The next time you feel anxious, here’s how you can use it to your advantage:
- Reevaluate your current goals. Don’t cross any of them off in a fit of pessimism, but take a realistic look at whether your timeline needs to be adjusted.
- Be a star at work. Use your accuracy to your advantage and speak up in meetings where the team is making plans.
- Plan a vacation or other personal experience. Your accuracy will make you great at picking the best B&B! You’ll be less likely to get duped by flowery language or wide angle photography.
Stress is unpleasant, but it doesn’t have to be a completely terrible experience. One great book on using stress to your advantage is The Upside of Stress, by Kelly McGonigal. In her research, stress was most damaging only if you THOUGHT it would hurt you. In fact, if you follow her steps, you can actually use stress to your advantage.
So if you want to be better at your job, don’t freak out the moment you feel stressed. Lean in to the stress, show off your awesome, accurate decision-making, and make stress work for you.
If you’re going through a divorce and struggling to regain your footing, these three mantras can help. Tell yourself these three short, memorable phrases to find emotional stability and hope for the future.
Have you ever had one of those times in life when you’re just on a roll? When everything seems to be going in your favor? Not that it’s all easy, but that it’s working – things are falling into place, and everything seems to be aligned.
Several years ago, I was flying high: I had started a small business that was growing successfully. I was winning awards and appearing in the newspaper. I felt important and respected. So important and respected, in fact, that another company approached me about acquiring us! Being asked to merge felt like a huge validation of our hard work, and as the leadership team sat down to discuss the potentially merger, we toasted ourselves and our success.
Within two months, we had made the decision to merge with the other company, and I moved our headquarters from my living room into their downtown offices. I traded in my daily yoga pants uniform for pencil skirts, and began my role at the new, larger organization.
I lasted there 9 months.
I had tears in my eyes as I handed in my letter of resignation. It was my shortest period of employment ever, made even more embarrassing by the fact that I was walking away from my own company, too, that was now a part of this larger company. A huge part of me didn’t want to do it, but I knew that I had to. I believed fully in the vision of the new organization, but it wasn’t a good match for me as an employee.
I had failed.
It was a failure not because the merger was a bad idea in the first place. The merger made sense. But in looking back, I realize I took the easy way out. I didn’t ask all the questions I should have. I got wooed by the money and the prestige. It’s not uncommon when one brand is larger and more established than the other: several months ago the merger between home technology companies Nest and Dropcam was revealed to have lots of uncomfortable tension that the two CEOs have gone on record saying they wish they had sorted out beforehand.
I take full responsibility for getting stars in my eyes about the promise of being acquired by a larger company. I didn’t do my due diligence, and I didn’t spend enough time thinking about what I was getting into. The good news is that the merger has paid off for several aspects of the organization I founded, and that was my first priority above everything else. But it wasn’t a great move for me, and I didn’t know it because I didn’t do my homework. It’s an embarrassing mistake for a founder to make.
No, I don’t regularly appear in the newspaper anymore, but when I handed in my resignation letter, I did take some time off to publish my first book. As with most things in life, the pendulum ends up swinging back and forth and evening things out in the long run. I do important work in different ways, now, and I’ve landed in places I might never have gotten.
So… have you ever had a failure that haunts you? What are your best ways for getting over it? I’d love some feedback for another blog post about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off after failure, so send me your stories!
