So I thought I’d share my experiences the day following my prior post. Previously I was describing how I got a “wake up call” at my workplace with an email with language expressing how people were either greatly disappointed or upset with me. It made me feel really bad and then evoked fear as I would have to face some of these people in future meetings in the coming days. Then on the day I was preparing to get confronted with some of the potentially upset people in a couple of my meetings something odd happened and I wanted to share.
I remember waking up early morning dreading to head out to work. I so badly wanted to call in sick as my stomach was feeling bad. But I knew if I did that I’d postpone the inevitable confrontations that needed to be made at my workplace. That in fact postponing it would make things worse as I’d have to stress out for several more days waiting in anticipation. In someways it’s a bit like way back when we were all in school and preparing for a really difficult final exam. On the day of the exam we’d almost wish it would get postponed, but then again we just wanted to get it over with.
So then when I arrived at my office, I looked over my calendar and reviewed the times of two particularly stressful meetings I was about to have. Actually, stressful is an understatement, they were terrifying. So for about half an hour I was panicking. But then suddenly something wierd happened. It was like something subtle infiltrated my cells and I wasn’t trembling, I wasn’t as scared. The facts of what I was about to face remained the same. Yes my meetings would remain just as challenging and stressful as they were before, but it was almost like some invisible force just injected me with a “protection” drug and I felt OK.
No more were there voices in me crying “AAAHHHH, Oh my God!!!” Now the voices were suddenly saying “Well, I got a job to do. It will be challenging but just be totally honest and address the issues or questions as they come. It will all be OK, no matter what happens. If a team member gets upset with me and vents that’s OK, it’s just part of being a human.” So I was still feeling the fear, but it was suddenly and noticeably dampened. It was just all OK.
This sensation that came over me defies words to properly describe, except to call it “Grace.” One might think that this calmness that overcame me was the result of sound psychology with me trying to challenge the negative voices with logical and positive thoughts. No. Here clearly no amount of psychological self talk helped. I can only explain it as a feeling of security spontaneously that came over me. And once I recognized it a feeling of tremendous gratitude welled up inside of me. And I said “Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!”
And my two stressful meetings came and went. Yes they were both challenging. But as I was in the meetings there were times I became an observer of the words I was saying. At times my words seemed glib, and I would think to myself “wow that was well said Wilson” All the thoughts I wanted to express, were expressed. Nothing was forgotten. My vocabulary was fully intact. And everyone else seemed far far less upset then I originally feared. Everything turned out fine.
Afterwards, I breathed a sigh of relief that a stressful day came and went, that I survived and that in fact things were not as bad as I feared. But even more importantly my emotions were not as bad as they could have been because the Power of “Grace” came over me.
