I think a big part of maturing professionally is how I’ve gotten a better handle on not trusting my gut.

He’s here to take my job. The VP knows him and hired him directly. There’s so many signals each week that say I’m right. He’s trying to take credit for a decade of my hard work. He’s going to exploit me and everyone will believe him and not me.

The more likely reality: he’s new here and I’ve been here for a decade. He was hired to basically replicate my success for sibling teams. He’s feeling immense pressure. He’s probably terrified of failing. I probably make him feel threatened. My defensive posture makes this worse. I give him signals all the time that he probably reads as me wanting him to fail or not liking him.

▲

Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> He’s here to take my job. The VP knows him and hired him directly. There’s so many signals each week that say I’m right. He’s trying to take credit for a decade of my hard work. He’s going to exploit me and everyone will believe him and not me.

I think this is where it’s important to know yourself.

If you’re having a constant stream of anxiety inducing thoughts and light paranoia, learning how to silence those and introduce a more objective view is helpful.

It can be taken too far, though. I had a friend whose company was showing all of the warning signs of financial problems, yet he was on a positivity kick and chose to substitute an “everything works out eventually” mentality. Instead, he rode the company right into their inevitable shutdown and missed some good opportunities to take other jobs along the way because he thought ignoring his gut was the right thing to do.

▲

Waterluvian 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah absolutely! That’s the challenge I’ve seen with anxiety (I’m painting with a broad brush here, and I’m no authority). You can’t outright disable the smoke alarms because sometimes they’re actually working.

▲

mdallastella 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's the difference between functional and disfunctional anxaety. The trick is to figure out which is which.

▲

Loughla 2 days ago | parent [-]

I am incapable of knowing which is which.

The problem is my rate of correct anxiety guesses is too high. I'm right a lot. But the ridiculous stuff sneaks in as well. This leads to me being constantly anxious and just hating my professional life.

How to fix? Sweet Lord in heaven. How to fix?

▲

aGHz 2 days ago | parent [-]

Keep an anxiety log for a few months. In my experience, this feeling of correctness is a retrospective impression that relies heavily on confirmation bias, and in reality is nowhere near that high. Either way, a concrete log will confirm or deny it.

If it's truly correct, then I'd say it's not anxiety and that you're probably more attuned to subtle cues. You can learn to pay conscious attention to these cues, evaluate them, and decide strategically if you want to act on them. The idea is to keep your advantage without the negative emotional reaction.

If it's not that accurate, having proof can help you internalize that you're just going through some particular emotional process, without according it any undue weight. Having let go of that, you can start picking up mechanical tricks for anxiety management, like breathing techniques.

	▲	mdallastella 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		^^^ This ^^^ Also, a CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) with a professional helps a lot.

▲

projektfu a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can respond positively here and still hedge your bet. The attitude of "The Show Must Go On" is perfectly reasonable, but you can still circulate your resume and take steps to avoid burnout. You can even ask a potential opportunity if they will be interested if you do your best to save the other company and join later. But you need to be grounded in reality.

	▲	Aurornis a day ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly right, but denying that gut feeling and ignoring the signs is not the right choice.

▲

roenxi a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even then shutting down the anxiety and paranoia is a good idea. You're friend didn't know how to process reality without feeling negative, maybe. But it can be done and they should probably learn how to do that. A calm & confident person can still see if a problem is coming, the real world isn't determined by the feelings of the viewer but by actual evidence present and a very fine sliver of basic world modelling. The difference is a well grounded person will just note it and feel pretty good about the whole process as they brush dust of the resume and start job hunting. Did their best, had a good time, made some friends, exciting new opportunities, etcetera.

Nobody has to be a pessimist to make accurate forecasts. It doesn't even help. The more your emotions and personality influence the forecast the worse a forecast it is, the future does not rewarp itself because the viewer feels positive or negative.

	▲	Aurornis a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Even then shutting down the anxiety and paranoia is a good idea. You're friend didn't know how to process reality without feeling negative, maybe. No, the way to “process” it was to start looking for new jobs, which would have avoided the completely avoidable employment and income gap.

▲

nine_k 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If the friend was ignoring his gut feeling, what objective instruments did he use instead?

If none, wasn't it was just choosing one gut feeling over another gut feeling?

▲

jmkni a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My "gut" is regularly way off.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've been driving to work thinking "oh shit I suck at my job I'm defo getting fired" to then be told " You're doing a good job keep it up"

Other time I think I'm doing a good job when everyone is actually very pissed off at me

	▲	hellojesus 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is my every day. "I suck and am worthless; I have no idea why I haven't been terminated yet." And this regularly builds to, "I've never achieved anything in life and, based on my past performance, likely never will. I probably should just kill myself now to save the trouble of doing it later." I have two young kids though, so my wife thinks that's a bad idea.

▲

BobbyTables2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good points.

I’ve also never worked at a company that had enough long term thinking to train up replacements. Several would only cut entire departments and/or only do layoffs.

So there isn’t really any point about worrying about being replaced (:>

▲

leptons 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>He’s here to take my job. The VP knows him and hired him directly. There’s so many signals each week that say I’m right.

In one situation for me, this was exactly the case. It became more clear as each week went by. It was a "bro" situation between the C-level and the new hire, and the C-level was a "30 under 30" so there was a high school mentality about it.

▲

mikert89 2 days ago | parent [-]

You can almost never win this situation, I have seen funded startups literally go under because of friendships and incorrect attribution of who did what.

	▲	awesome_dude 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, the true sign of a "team" - credit being apportioned... The problem isn't one person being over looked, it's that one person is being praised. We all make contributions that we feel are noteworthy, but when someone else's noteworthy contributions are highlighted we then have to ask, why theirs and not ours.