Have you been feeling judged for your performance by colleagues or managers at work?
I have this lasting memory with a former colleague and friend. It continues to remind me that we never really know what other people are thinking.
I had felt tension with her at work for a week. I was getting anxious thinking she was upset with me but was completely unsure why.
Finally, I decided to ask her. I walked up to her desk and asked:
“Are…are you mad at me?”
She looked up from her computer with a puzzled face and said: “Huh?”
I was nervous to go further, but decided to explain that I had gotten the sense that she was upset with me.
She got up from her chair and came over and hugged me. She told me she was never upset, but that things in her personal life had been stressful lately.
This is a significant memory that reminds me how wrong we can be when we assume we know how people feel about us.
When we’re wearing ‘fear-colored glasses’, it seems like everyone is judging us. We assume they’re upset with us or frustrated by us. Everywhere we look we find it. We imagine it. We worry about it.
The work is to remember that we don’t in fact truly know what other people think of us (until they tell us). All we have is our assumptions.
What you think other people think about you are your thoughts.
When we can remind ourselves that our assumptions of what colleagues, clients, staff and managers think of us are just assumptions, and those assumptions can impact how we feel deeply.
If you’re someone who often assumes people are judging you at work or within your business, I invite you to do a very simple but intentional practice:
Give yourself dedicated time – 5, 10, 15 minutes – to assume that they think the best of you – or at the very least, your capability, qualities and skills.
You’re already using your imagination to assume the worst.
Can you use that brilliant brain and inventive imagination to assume people in your work also think you’re pretty capable, useful and skilled?
If you spend 10 minutes a day thinking about how they might think about you in a positive light, how might that affect your anxiousness, self-doubt, worry or stress?
The answer: drastically. Give it a try. Use your imagination for good, on purpose.
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