Coping with Job Anxiety

Life skills. Scene one, take one. (upbeat music) (people chattering) Looking at each other. (upbeat music) Rolling. Hi, I'm Liz Fosslien. And I'm Mollie West Duffy. Together we co-authored two bestselling books about emotions at work. The skills in this series will help you better acknowledge, understand, and move through your work-related feelings. (upbeat music) There's a lot of things that can give you job anxiety. Am I gonna get laid off? Is today the day? What's gonna happen then? I tend to go into planning for all of the possible options that may happen. I was working at a startup, they had done a really big round of layoffs. I was lucky enough not to have been laid off, but it seemed inevitable that there would be more coming. I went into this like frenzied trying to take control of my day mode. It did prompt me to sit down and say, I'm anxious because I'm so scared of getting laid off. Let's confront that. (upbeat music) Humans hate uncertainty. In fact, we would rather know that something bad is going to happen than have a 50% chance of it happening. When you know something bad will happen, you kind of feel like you're in control 'cause you can make a plan for it. When you don't know if it's gonna happen, but it could happen, you have to prepare for multiple scenarios, and often your uncertainty feels totally justified. Maybe you're nervous about getting laid off or a job restructuring, or having to join a new team. If you have felt anxious because of any of those concerns, you are absolutely not alone. According to LinkedIn data, over a third of Americans are worried about getting laid off, and 20% actually think they will get laid off over the next 12 months. To successfully navigate uncertainty, focus on doing two things. One, reducing the amount of risk that you expect you'll face. And two, boosting your belief in yourself. That no matter what happens, you'll find a way through. (upbeat music) Translate your anxiety into specific fears, and then come up with a plan for how you might address that fear. So instead of saying, I feel bad and stopping there, ask yourself, what am I afraid of? And then come up with some steps you could take in that eventuality. A powerful way to build confidence in yourself is to look back at all the times you felt uncertain before, but you made it through successfully. So questions to ask yourself include, when was I unsure of the next step I should take? What did I do well in that situation? What did I learn that I might wanna do differently now? Answering these questions can help you tell a story to yourself where you did succeed through uncertainty, which helps you realize that you can do it again if you have to. In the next activity, we'll walk you through an exercise to help you translate your...