"Oh crap, this is spilling and running at the wrong rate! How do I stop it? Where is the roller valve? Ughhhh...!" There you have it, a scenario of me some months back where panic kicked in and started dictating the situation. "¿Ok, Tania agarra la onda, qué tienes que hacer? ¡Tú sabes!" *Grabs the roller valve, closes it and presses pause on the pump.* You probably read that and thought "Huh, what?". Well that was me giving myself a quick internal pep talk in Spanish. I basically said to myself, "Ok Tania, get a hold of yourself. What do you have to do? You know!" Let me just start off by saying that inexperience does numbers on you. Imagine the combination of inexperience and being new on the job...now top it off with something going wrong. How can one not freak out? It is quite understandable right? Well, yes and no. Majority of the time we know what to do in times of crisis and panic, but both our mind and body go into panic mode, and rationalizing just seems to go out the window! If we can just get a hold of ourselves, we can retake control, thus consequently proceed to the appropriate steps in solving the situation. Even though it is much easier to run and go get help...have someone else fix our problem...it is much more rewarding when you put yourself to the test. How? By investing the time to figure things out yourself. In the chapter "Control Your Emotions" Holiday (2014) says "Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority" (p.28). This is true, with enough exposure to challenges we eventually won't be fazed by them. But of course like many things in life, this is easier said than done. I will be the first to testify to it. I still remember talking with my mom and telling her about work. The ups and downs, the stress and pressure I felt...and still feel, but not as much as I did in the beginning. I would confess that it was especially unbearable when driving to work, due to my commute being so long, roughly an hour and a half in traffic. As a result my mind would go through all the worst possible scenarios that could occur at work. I could feel myself become tachycardic and hypertensive at the thought of things going wrong! I mean I was not even at work and I was already freaking out, good gracious huh?! It was when I read this chapter that I learned about 'apatheia' (a state of mind in Stoic philosophy where the individual is not disturbed by the passions). In other words, it simply means that we should not let our emotions get the best of us. We must be able to regulate our emotions and ask ourselves "Do I need to freak out?". Hey, maybe you do, and if so take a second, it is okay...but just as soon as you are done freaking out, for literally one second, get to taking action. There is a great question that Holiday (2014) asks, "Why are you all worked up over something that is at least occasionally supposed to happen?" (p.30). I laughed when I read this, because it is SO true. As I think back to all the dreaded, catastrophic possible scenarios I would imagine on my drive to work, I realized some had already happened, and I had come out on the other side, still intact. Sure, a few times with mild internal freak-outs like the one I described earlier, but alive. *Lol* In retrospect, it was not that bad. We make things seem worse than they really are. Next time I feel anxiety trying to win me over with something crazy happening at work, I am going to hit it with a "No thank-you, I can't afford to panic!" #BoomPower (hashtag courtesy of a instructor I once had, she used it when we thought things out and got problems right), because people die in my line of work if we panic. So remember, resist, skip panic, and take appropriate action. "Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself."
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