When I set my monthly challenge this month to be about not thinking too much in the future about things that may go wrong or right in my life, I assumed a lot of what I would be using that for would be related to things I already know are going on. I didn’t want to stress about moving. I didn’t want to worry more about the pandemic. I didn’t want to overthink dating. But because my life is like this, I had an unexpected curveball right at the start of the month!
Things at my customer service job have been crazy lately, but most of the crazy has been good. I’ve been working more hours, taking on more responsibilities, and helping with projects that will help the company continue to grow. But whenever things change in a job, mistakes can be made too. And while I haven’t made any really bad mistakes, there have been things that weren’t communicated as clearly as they could have or procedures that are in the process of being changed and it’s unclear what is supposed to be done now.
So on Wednesday, my manager asked me if I could have a Zoom call with her the next day (which was yesterday). There weren’t any specifics on why we were having the call, so my brain went to all the horrible things it could be. Because of my work history, I am always terrified that I’m about to be fired. I know that’s now what would be happening this time (right after this meeting was set up I was invited to 2 other meetings that are for my entire department). But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the negatives that it could be. I hate that that’s how I think and that’s exactly why I set my challenge to be this for September.
So for the time between knowing about my meeting and when it started, I really worked on focusing on what I did know and what was not speculation. And I went into my meeting a bit nervous, but not nearly as stressed as I might have been if I wasn’t working on not overthinking the future.
And of course the meeting wasn’t a bad thing. There were some communication things to work out so we had a better line of communication when discussing clients so there wouldn’t as many back and forth emails and texts. And we clarified some things that led to the miscommunication that both of us weren’t able to realize in written communication. Those things needed to be worked out and will only make work better for me going forward.
And then we started to discuss things that aren’t happening yet that we might want to change. I can’t go into too many details about it, but we discussed how to manage client communication better so anyone could help clients without needing access to as many things as we have right now. Also, how to make sure all new clients have everything they need in order to understand the company. Some of this would be about what my role might be like in the future, which is good to hear when I was worried earlier that I had done something really wrong and wondered if I was going to lose my job.
I’ve said this so many times before, but I wonder when I will stop worrying that I will be losing my job every time I have a meeting about something. I’ve gone a significant portion of my life since I have had that happen to me. And I haven’t had any quick turnaround with jobs like I did the year that things were the worst for me. I’ve been with my customer service job for about 9 months, and that’s the shortest time of any of my jobs right now. I’ve been working with my box office job for 7 years already! But I still have this stupid irrational fear of being fired for no reason.
Maybe because I am purposely working on fixing this way of thinking, things will be better for me in the future. At least now I know that some of the tools I wanted to use to test this challenge do work because this wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Just like when I set my monthly challenge, I guess I’ll see in a month how I feel. But I got a little idea now of what it could be like.
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A Failed Monthly Challenge (or I’m Possibly Going To Fail Again This Month)
Failing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month)
