Do you want people to Judge you...
As someone who is STRONG or as someone who is WEAK?
As someone who is DEPENDABLE or as someone who's A DISAPPOINTMENT?
As someone who is WORTH KNOWING or as someone who's USELESS?
But, wait!
Just before you answer that question...
In yesterday's article, remember how I dropped a big bombshell stating that the only way to avoid sacrificing your Job because of anxiety and depression is to...
Tone... Down... Your... Strengths.
I know, totally crazy, right?
So carrying on with this concept.
In today's article, I'll reveal a powerful 3-step technique that supercharges your ability to cope at work. Despite your anxiety and depression.
But first...
Society has tricked us all into feeling terrified about people perceiving us as weak.
You don’t want people to change how they are around you.
You pretend to be a totally different person from the “depressed anxious you.”
You pretend to be positive, funny,and bubbly. You become that person who is always enthusiastic. Always throwing yourself into things. Always having your chin up and making people smile.
It’s kind of hard to then go… Oh, actually… I suffer from depression… Or uhmm, I suffer with anxiety problems.
But here's an even bigger issue...
Whilst you are out there, spending all this energy feeling bad about your weaknesses...
Have you been misled into stereotypes about strengths and weaknesses?
Has society tricked you to believe that you need strengths to function in life?
Sadly...
Relying heavily on your strengths will blind you to the crucial truth that…
All strengths are two-way streets.
Your strengths can be a blessing or a curse.
Your strengths can bring you both positive or negative outcomes.
Your strengths can be your weaknesses that quite easily sabotage your efforts to cope at work.
There is a super effective 3 step system that can neutralise all your pressure and niggling self doubt at work. And this system works really fast once you get the hang of it.
I know, crazy right...
I chose to name it MAD because people usually think I’ve gone crazy when I suggest this concept to them. It simply goes against everything you’ve been taught.
I also chose it because, to my surprise, MAD worked as a great mnemonic device.
So, here is…
MAD is simply an acronym for…
Magnify your strengths.
Attend to your strengths.
Do something opposite or alternative to your strengths.
Now to make the system easy to follow, I will walk you through how one of my former clients used it.
I’ll call her Aliza for confidential reasons.
Aliza was an intelligent middle aged Asian lady.
Sadly, despite her intelligence and hard work, she felt tormented by intense feelings of inadequacy.
Aliza came to therapy terrified that she was losing her mind. She found herself taking almost 3 hours to do work she would have previously done in 30 minutes.
It was like she'd lost her ability to think.
And was frustrated by her inability to climb out of the black hole she was now in. She'd lost her appetite, was hardly sleeping, and simply couldn't switch off.
Here’s an account of how Aliza used The Mad System.
You know how a magnifying glass makes everything bigger and more eligible?
Well, in step M, you use an imaginary magnifying glass to discover which strengths are sabotaging you.
To magnify your strengths...
You first focus on the goal you want to achieve. And then figure out if your strengths are helping you work towards the goal, or working against it.
So for example, Aliza's goals were to build up her resilience to stress and depression. She wanted her work pressures to stop triggering feelings of inadequacy within her.
She wanted to be able to appreciate the things she had already achieved and be able to take credit for it. She wanted to stop comparing herself with others.
Then once you've clarified your goal, you list the four to five strengths you regularly rely on.
Relating this back to Aliza's experience, she listed the following strengths.
1. She was cool and diplomatic in her approach to communicating with others. Excellent at seeing both sides of any argument.
2. She was intelligent.
3. She was driven to improve herself. Always felt she could do better and pushed herself to get the most out of situations.
4. She has a good sense of humour.
So, after you list your four to five strengths like we’ve done above for Aliza, you analyze each strength to uncover its weaknesses.
After Analysing Aliza’s strengths, we arrived at the following.
This was a strength because It allowed Aliza to see things from other people's points of view.
And this helped her make wise decisions at work. It also made her easy to get along with so she was able to build friends. And was less likely to get rejected by people.
Because Aliza was so good at seeing both sides of the picture at work, she often rationalised her own anger and upset away. Making excuses for why other people feel hurt.
As a result, undermining her own opinions and values. Sadly, this eroded her sense of purpose and self-identity. And contributed to making her feel raw and inadequate.
How might this relate to you?
If this was your strength, it could contribute to making you feel people at work are taking advantage of d your kind nature. Which could easily lead to sleepless nights. Making you hate going to work.
Because she was so articulate, Aliza developed the habit of reasoning with herself all the time. She over analysed everything in detail. And this fed massively into her anxiety.
Aliza defined herself by her intelligence. It felt like she would be nothing if she didn’t have it. Her intelligence became another brazen high standard to hold herself up to.
How might this relate to you?
If this was your strength, it could be the reason you’re super aware of little mistakes you make at work. Which could then lead to the well known feeling of not being good enough.
Aliza was always striving to be better in whatever she did. This meant she often got recognised for the quality of her work. And it also gave her more opportunities to earn money.
Because she channelled a huge amount of energy into whatever she did at work, Aliza was often too exhausted to do anything else whenever she got home. She had no energy to spend with her family members. And this overwhelmed her with feelings of guilt.
How might this relate to you?
Whilst having a drive for self-improvement is a good thing, if you do this too much, it causes you to stop seeing things you are good at. Leading to a dissatisfied life.
Aliza loved being funny and bubbly. She liked lifting the spirits of everyone at work. She liked joking in this made her fun to be around.
Although this good sense of humour was great, Aliza felt like she wasn’t allowed show normal flat moods like everybody else. She believed people now knew her to be funny so if she acted otherwise, they'd think she was a fake person. As such, Aliza was under constant pressure to keep up the fun act and this was exhausting.
How might this relate to you?
You could easily become the butt of everyone’s joke at work. People just won’t to take you seriously. Which could make you feel like no one respects you. Impacting your sense of self-worth negatively.
Now we move on to step 2...
Now that you know what strengths are sabotaging you, all you’ve got to do is start paying attention to them.
Catch yourself just before falling into overusing the strength.
Stop, think about what you are about to do.
Then you move on to the next step.
Doing something opposite or alternative helps to tone down the negative impact your strength.
But why do I say, opposite and alternative?
You see, in some situations doing the opposite just won’t make any sense. That’s why you have to consider an alternative. For example, the opposite of love is hate. And hate is certainly an extreme you don’t want in your life.
Here is an example of how Aliza toned down her strength by doing the opposite or alternative.
I will be using Aliza's strength of diplomacy to show how this worked.
Now, the opposite of diplomacy is to be inconsiderate of other people’s opinion or to be brash and impolite.
But, on first glance, it won’t make any sense to use the opposite reactions in this case.
So, we go for an alternative.
What could be an alternative reaction to diplomacy?
Looking closely at Aliza’s diplomatic reactions. See how she sacrifices her own opinions to favour other people’s opinions. So, an alternative reaction here could be for Aliza to lean towards her own opinion more often. And stand her ground with this.
In practice though, Aliza was initially afraid of doing this.
She predicted that people will start to treat her really badly.
But, on trying this new reaction out, to Aliza’s surprise, her work colleagues began to treat her with more respect. And this enabled her to feel more confident to work through all the other strengths.
And as a result...
Five weeks later, Aliza found herself feeling less anxious and more confident in herself. She felt more confident about work. And stopped feeling so exhausted from the demands of her tasks at work.
She was sleeping better and developed an overall sense of positivity about herself and her abilities.
Now, over to you.
Here's the deal…
life will always present with its difficult pressures.
The more you step out of your comfort zone to participate in this threatening world. And the more you try to achieve your goals in your chosen career, the more you'll have to deal with pressure.
There's simply no running away from it.
But, your approach to managing your pressure will determine if you crumble or prevail.
Unless you realize that your strengths contribute to the problems that defeat you, you'll always be vulnerable to emotional difficulties.
But once you realize what's happening...
And you begin to balance your strengths so they stop sabotaging you, you'll begin to notice wonderful things happening in your life.
Things you never thought could happen.
And yes I know it's going to take a lot of work on your part to break through, and make your strengths work more in your favour.
But listen, it's totally worth it!
When you gain the freedom from overthinking everything.
When you start having more positive experiences at work and are able to do so by choice.
When you start being able to engineer new experiences at work that make you feel valued and appreciated.
You won't be thinking about how hard it was.
You are not going to say yeah... yeah...
I was able to get rid of that constant feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, but that's no big deal.
No possible way!
What's really going to happen is that you are going to be driving to work one day, tears streaming down your face...
Not because you are sad, but because you are feeling good, confident, happy that you are actually looking forward to going to work.
I want that to happen for you.
It's the whole reason I am writing these article series here.
And by the way, if you'd like my help in discovering which strengths are sabotaging you at work.
Because, as you work through this, you'll discover that...
Honestly, it can get pretty confusing very quickly.
So if you'd like my help to ensure you keep on the right track, simply click the button below to read about what I'm putting together for you.
And no pressure or anything, but if you like these articles, and if you are learning from them, I think you'll enjoy what I have for you.
And if not, that's totally cool too, I've got more free stuff coming your way that I think will help you out.
Alright, Talk with you soon,
Wishing you lots of love and encouragement.
Adewale (StressTherapist)
