You’re sitting in a meeting and some guy pokes fun at the idea you just pitched, in a way that sounds like when your dad made you feel stupid as a kid. You feel your pulse quicken. At once angry and diminished, you feel yourself reverting to the 8-year old you that believed your dad. What do you?
How you react in that moment, what you say to yourself in that moment, could make or break the deal you’re trying to close, your professional reputation, and maybe even your career.
It’ll also affect your self-esteem, self-respect and self-confidence, and your mental health more broadly.
The shocking suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, who had lives many of us aspire to, rightfully shined a light on the suicide epidemic, mental health issues, and how we can help people suffering from depression. It’s another reminder to get our heads out of our phones, talk to people face to face, and listen.
Their tragedies are also a reminder to manage that voice in your head. Here are useful insights.
“Regular People” Pressures – How You Respond is What Matters
“[R]egular people can wind up with the same urgent need to maintain a celebrity-like front to the world,” Ana Marie Cox wrote in The Washington Post after the Spade and Bourdain suicides. “[P]ressure to conform to whatever story we’ve created for ourselves …(is) based in the simple fear of revealing yourself to be flawed, and how the world (or just your friends and family — your world) will respond when you do.”
It’s this fear that can take over when we face a stressor, whether it’s the revelation of a mistake, an unhappy client, or being spoken to in a degrading manner.
Read the full blog on Forbes here.
