Ruth Sanderson

What are you worrying about?

What’s keeping you awake at night?

Years ago I was very good at worry.  For example I’d lie awake worrying myself into quite a state over whether I’d passed an exam.  My Dad, with consummate patience would ask me if I could do anything about ‘it’ right now.  Always the answer was no.  “So why worry, what good is it doing you; it’s currently stopping you from sleeping and right now that’s what you should be doing, sleeping.” Sadly this was a regular conversation we had, until I learnt to ask myself the question “what can I do about it right now”.  Clearly if I was worrying the night before the exam, then the answer was either get out of bed and do some more revision, or go to sleep cos I’d done all the revision I was going to do.  In other words, the worry was pointless.

It’s possible to sub classify worry, yes really….

There’s the worry that’s guilt.  Guilt is that awful emotion when you feel bad after an event; you did or said something that you now wish you could alter.  Most guilt is pretty quick to shift.  Here’s the question, just before you did/said whatever you now wish you hadn’t, what was going on for you, did you know it was ‘wrong’?  If the answer is no, then learn the lesson, take the feedback for next time and move along, don’t whip yourself to bits over it.  If the answer is yes, then go ahead and do guilt, although perhaps it’s more productive to re-assess your values or will power depending on what was going on.

There’s worry that’s anxiety - this is where your imagination is having a field day coming up with possible outcomes or scenarios for a particular event, e.g. giving a presentation.  Here’s the kicker though, by doing this you’re training yourself to fail.  Yes in order for you to be anxious you must be running various movies of you failing, either spectacularly, or just embarrassing yourself.  Again the question “what can I do about it?” helps.  Let’s take a presentation, you’re worrying that the IT won’t work, well practice with it a bit more, do what you can so that you’re comfortable with it.  Or you’re worrying that you’ll forget what to say, again practice.  Or you’re worrying you’ll fall over whilst walking on to the stage to begin your presentation, now let’s assume here you’ve mastered the art of walking and falling over isn’t a daily occurrence.  In which case the question to ask yourself is “how likely is this to happen and if it did how would I recover?”  Now once your mind has finished having a field day of disasters at your expense, and you’ve come up with ways to mitigate it, it will a) get bored - now persecuting you is no longer fun and b) you’ll be running movies of things going just the way you want them.

Anxiety is failure imagined.  You can beat it by imagining success - it takes just as much mental capacity as the failure part, however it’s a lot kinder to the rest of your body, yes your heart rate and stress levels are a lot lower too.

Of course there is pure worry, that’s when you’re not sure what’s going to happen in life in general.  Forget one specific event to imagine failure on, here you get to do it on everything, so in a way it feels more normal because it’s about everything, it’s that general worry and when this becomes a habit it’s called pessimism.  If the ‘unknown’ causes you to worry you end up being fearful of life.  Yes the unknown can be scary at times, but sometimes you should also feel excited at the ‘unknown’ or curious, or calm even.  Use you imagination and the power of thought and play.  If you can see life as one long series of experiments, some work, some don’t, but you keep learning, tweaking and moving forward, then you take the pressure off yourself to be perfect and always get it right.

And if all else fails I find shouting “get a grip of yourself woman” works for me

Who do you knock about with?  Whether it’s face to face or via social networking like Twitter and Facebook.

Your connections have an impact on you.  It’s said that we’re 6 degrees of separation away from anyone, making it a very small world.  Indeed a phone call I got last week from someone I hadn’t seen for a couple of years, included the opening, “I notice you’re LinkedIn to blah, I met them last week at a conference (location miles away).”

I remember the first time my mentor told me that my earnings would be very similar to the 6 people I spent the most time with.  Moral of this being if you want to be a millionaire, knock about a lot with some millionaires.

One thing is true, the people you spend the most time with you’ll share the most in common with.  If they like watching football on TV, chances are you do too.  If they’re in to studying metaphysics, then maybe you do too.  Now the first I know so little about, but the latter, well if you ever fancy a conversation

Nicholas Christakis has been researching the dynamics of personal influence.  He concluded that we’re influenced by up to 3 degrees of separation, not the full 6.  One of his examples includes that “a person is 15% likelier to be happy if his/her friends are happy, 10% likelier if the friends’ friends are happy, and 6% likelier is the friends of those friends’ friends are happy.”  It no longer matters how happy the 4th,5th and 6th degree of separation are.

If you want something (be it tangible or intangible) look at those you spend the most time with, do they have ‘it’ or want ‘it’, if so you’re in good company, if not there could be some tough decisions coming up.

When you see something, how often do you make judgements based on the setting in which you see it?

A friend sent me an email about an experiment organised by the Washington Post.

In a nutshell, a young chap plays the violin at a metro station one cold morning in Washington DC.  It’s rush hour, he plays several pieces of music over 45 mins and more than a thousand people pass by.  During his performance a few people slow down, 7 stop and about 27 people gave him money.  The one who paid him most attention was a 3 year old boy, his mum doing her best to drag him along so she wouldn’t be late for work.  During this time he collected $32.  Between each piece there was silence, no applause or recognition.

Who was this violinist?   Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world, playing various classical pieces on a violin worth a cool $3.5 million.  What’s more prior to the experiment on the metro station, tickets for his performance at a theater in Boston were sold out and the seats averaged $100.

The experiment was done to see if in a common place setting we notice real beauty and talent, and do we allow ourselves time to appreciate it.  Or are we so absorbed in the minutiae of our life that we miss many special moments to be lost forever.

So back to my initial question - to what extent do you let the environment influence your expectations, your judgement, your perception?

You’ve probably heard it said many times, focus on what you want.  The reason is you give your brain and subconscious a clear target to go for.

Right now I’m focusing on having a straight right arm.  For the last 18 years it’s been bent (the legacy of a car accident, and in the scheme of things a tiny legacy at that).  A few weeks ago they removed a piece of bone which was stopping it straighten and I left the hospital slightly groggy and with instructions to do my physiotherapy 3 times a day.  And I have.  3 times a day I’m either crying with pain, squealing with pain or making snorting panting noises like an angry warthog.  And it’s all self inflicted.  Through all of this I can ’see’ my arm straight, and most days I make small tiny improvements.  Why would I put myself through this, because I want the prize sooo much.  This is short term pain for long term gain.  It’s also a very personal example of focus.

You see you can want something and focus on getting it, but always there is a price to pay and that’s where you get to decide is it worth it.  The day after the operation they brought me cornflakes for my breakfast.  Now because of how I was lying in bed and where my arm was positioned, the trolley with my breakfast on was a good arms length away.  So each spoonful was transported a reasonable distance with the left arm (my least dominant) and along the way milk was spilt.  Now dribbling milk over yourself is no big thing, but after about seven mouthfuls I’d had enough.  So I left my breakfast and yes I was still hungry and thirsty but not enough to persist.

It’s a new year and a common time to set new year resolutions, or goals for the year.  How often do they end up abandoned, how many people give up even setting goals - too many.  In a way goals are a focus for the year, they can give some meaning, context, direction.  However if the goal doesn’t matter that much as soon as other things come along, or it gets a bit difficult we back off or give up.  Typically when we’re going for something we have to step out of our comfort zone.  My arm is now quite happy in the range of movement it’s had for the last 18 years, the new range that’s emerging is more painful but if I don’t stretch the muscles and work them then nothing is ever going to change and removing the bone would have been pointless.

Focus on the size of the prize, when you know it’s worth it and you’ll do anything to get there commence the journey.  In times of discomfort it’s the prize that keeps you going.

Right now I’m breathing a sigh of relief, whilst also feeling slightly chuffed (translation = pleased with myself).

Why - because I’ve just launched a multi media product that helps individuals find and build a career that they love and let’s them express their real self.  Confidence, self esteem and job fulfilment increase massively as a consquence.

After donkey’s years of reading hundreds of books, attending several very expensive workshops and seminars, practicing on myself mercilessly, working with thousands of clients and leading many workshops, I’ve finally done it.  I’ve put together a practical, structured and informative multimedia package that helps you uncover the job and workplace you’re meant to thrive in.

In today’s economy it’s tempting to accept less, to think job satisfaction is enough.  That being able to build a successful career, where you get to be you and do what you love, is some type of fantasy.

But what if you could uncover your personal combination that sets you on the right career path?    I mean you could go through life with trial and error in finding the job, career and corporate environment that lets you shine. 

With a career that spans 21 years, I spent the first 12 years doing the whole trial and error approach to unlocking my personal code, and I can say it has very little to recommend it, but once I found my key that’s when things really began to take off. 

For the last 6 years I’ve been helping my clients find a job with meaning.   One that brings a deep sense of fulfilment; allows them to express their true identity and thrive, even in uncertainty.  And right now, more than ever, these are uncertain times.

So I’ve put together my proven process and system that takes you through this mental lock picking and in as little as 8 hours you could have your key to finding job fulfilment.

Take a look

Right,  I think I’ll reward myself with some chocolate and then it’s back to it.

I love this.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.