08.05.2025
PANICKER, NONCHALANT, REALIST, OR WHAT IS USEFUL ANXIETY AND HOW IT DRIVES YOUR CAREER FORWARD
You have an important meeting coming up. Your career depends on it. If you are persuasive enough, you have a chance to get a promotion. If you're not, making a bad impression on your bosses could cause you problems in your current position as well.
The stakes are high and there's no point in pretending you're not worried at all. Of course you are tense. The huge efforts that you have put in for a long time may go unappreciated and unrewarded, so much so that you may even cash in on a loss. In order not to flinch at such a moment, you must be on pills.
According to experts, people are divided into three types according to how they deal with anxiety. In exceptional cases, but also in general, because every day work presents challenges.
The first kind of people are panickers. They worry a lot and often, they are able to panic even over a trifle. This can be a real problem for their career, because it seems that they cannot stand pressure, at important moments they lose their temper.
Paradoxically, panickers want the exact opposite: to be in control, to have power, to be successful, to always be right, to be admired by others. They are afraid that they may be considered mediocre and insignificant, which is precisely why they worry. And the more they worry, the worse they perform.
However, the nonchalants find themselves in the same unenviable position. Unless they're stupid, people who don't worry about anything tend to bury their heads in the sand. When life presents them with an obstacle, they do not want to take risks, preferring to maintain the status quo. And they detach themselves from everything that is happening around them, hoping that it will go away by itself. It, of course, does not go away, but strikes them with even greater force and leads to even more unenviable consequences.
Realists are people who realize that eternal carelessness does not exist and constant panic makes no sense. They experience "useful anxiety," as Bob Rawson, author of The Power of Awareness in Business and Life, calls it.
Achieving a balanced level of anxiety gives you enough tension to keep you going through tough times without feeling like giving up or looking for ways to control the changes happening around you, Rawson explains.
The first step to realizing such a balance is to get used to the feeling of discomfort when stepping out of your comfort zone.
"A lot of people think the point of life is to be happy. I think the point is to have a fulfilling life. And that means sometimes having bad days and other times having good days," Rawson says.
The second step to balance is learning to look for and recognize the cause of your anxiety.
"Instead of trying to hide it, try to understand it. Ask yourself what makes you feel anxious. How you interpret your anxiety determines whether it will help you or hurt you. A balanced dose of anxiety can be extremely useful. Ultimately, we all have problems we want to solve and goals we want to achieve. Anxiety is the energy that drives us to take action," concludes Bob Rawson.
