New job jitters: real-life advice for the overly-anxious
Firstly, well done! Seriously, if you’re reading this, chances are you beat the competition and are about to be crowned “the new guy” for the next three to six months (or maybe you’re just slacking off to read this at your current job, in which case, I’m still proud of you. Please continue).
For those who have landed a new job, don’t fret. Although what lies ahead is new and undoubtedly frightening, by taking this step you’re achieving the dreams of your ancestors! Perhaps not “capital D. ‘Dream’” but a nice small dream where you swap your time for money. Who knows, perhaps you’ll make so much money you can afford to start a family one day and become an ancestor yourself. Terrific stuff.
Yet for many of us, instead of popping champagne and luxuriating under wave after wave of joy and fulfillment, we experience a totally different emotional rush: anxiety. Depending on your experience in your chosen field and your experience being anxious, new job anxiety can range from an excitable feeling of trepidation to a sudden longing for a swift and merciful death.
Personally, when I begin a new job, I find myself almost immediately longing for death: to be safe in the cold, hard ground, hidden away from judging eyes. Will I be good enough? Did they hire the wrong person? Was there a name mix up and I’m not supposed to be here at all? Gosh, this would all be so much easier if I was laying in a nice, safe ditch…
If this sounds like you, I’m here to help. I’m not promising my advice will transform you into a mentally sound worker bee, but, in my experience, it made me want to curl up and die just that little bit less.
1. You don’t have to be a work God/Goddess. You’re a fancy bag of meat
Too many self-help manuals say that on your first day you should imbue yourself with a mantra of confidence. I am worthy, you should say as you fail to operate the copy machine. I am capable, you should recite as you forget your managers name. I deserve this, you must chirp to the rhythm of your dripping tears.
To me, this kind of forced confidence seems counter-intuitive, after all, the higher the pedestal, the greater the fall. To help ease my inevitable descent, my mantra is simple: “I accept that, medically speaking, I’m a fancy bag of meat stuffed into a suit jacket”. With this in mind, I’m free to relinquish my need to be a champion of confidence and can take pity on myself during those first career defining moments. I am not a power business lady; I’m a breakfast sausage being forced to give a presentation. It’s amazing I can do this at all.
With time, perhaps you too can marvel at how we’ve evolved so far. We can dress our meaty bodies, waddle them into trains, and teach them how to sit in a cubical all day! It’s a miracle! Let this be enough for now. After all, there’s loads of time to be an over-achieving sausage, should you wish to do that later on.
2. Failure is inevitable and can be a good thing
Even if you’re not particularly great at anything yet, remember, being terrible at something is usually the unavoidable first step to becoming competent. Crazy as it sounds, humans are simply not born knowing how to use Excel or write a marketing plan. Oddly enough, this simple fact is not always understood by seemingly intelligent people: sometimes by ourselves, and in unfortunate cases, occasionally by our future managers.
Many years ago, I applied for a Media Assistant position and got the job. Previously, I had been a secretary, and although I was nervous to make the jump I felt confident that I could achieve the main task outlined in the description: cutting relevant articles from newspapers and pasting them into a clippings book. I may not have known much back then, but I knew how to use scissors. In addition to my scrap-booking duties, I would be given the chance to watch and learn until deemed competent for other tasks. However, within days of my accepting the role, my job ballooned. Soon I was Media Assistant, Marketing Coordinator, and oddly enough, also the Media Coordinator. Apparently, some people had left and rather than hire new ones why not give the new girl a chance to really SHINE! What an opportunity, they said in chorus.
Hold your horses, hold all of your damn horses. That’s a terrible idea, perhaps the worst idea of all job-giving time, is what I should have said. But I didn’t. Wracked with anxiety I agreed to the position. Constantly worried whether I would be good enough. I wasn’t. I struggled with almost every task in sight: Photoshop, InDesign, coding multimedia emails in Dreamweaver software: you name it, I was incredibly mediocre at it.
I had to do something. I couldn’t keep failing with such regularity. My self-esteem was at an all-time low while my boss’ reprimand sessions were reaching an alarming high. I made a meeting with my manager to say help: I need training, I’m overwhelmed and need support. Laying both her palms flat on the table, my manager said the words every junior wants to hear: just shut up and do it.
And so, I did it! I shut up and handed in my resignation letter shortly afterwards. Although this failure stung, it taught me and my anxiety a good lesson: There’s really no use losing sleep over the seemingly terrifying question: “will I be good enough?”. Being right for the role is just as much your new manager’s responsibility as it is yours. If they’ve chosen well, you should be allowed to learn and fail along the way, and if you’re totally out of your depth, get out of that pool and start over. No one should let themselves drown because someone threw them in the deep end too soon.
3. Fake it
Forget what your loving partners may have told you, sometimes in life it’s okay to fake it. Even now, as a mildly successful professional, whenever I walk through my new workplace, staring across a sea of desks and bobbing heads, I am overcome with the same irrational fear — These people will forever be strangers to me. These people know what they’re doing. They’re typing and knowing things. I don’t even know where the toilets are.
To alleviate this fear, I remind myself of the sage advice I was given on my first day as a secretary over ten years ago: “half the job of being employed is looking busy, making typing sounds, and saying things during meetings”. Once you’ve got that down, the rest should slowly fall into place. Just keep faking it and soon even newer staff will be looking at you as an faux-example of unobtainable greatness.
4. ‘A’ is for Aneurysm
For many of us, it’s not enough that we were awarded our new job over other candidates, or that money will magically appear in our bank accounts each fortnight, we must strive for the all-important “A”: we must be THE BEST at our jobs! Because if we’re not THE BEST then we are less-than-best, which to highly anxious people is pretty much the same as being the worst.
For those of you with this kind of anxiety. I understand. And perhaps for you the idea of being a sausage, or a faker, or a self-accepting failure is of little comfort right now. After all, you got the job by saying you were THE BEST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE, not a weird little sausage person.
If you really are naturally ‘the best’ all the time, kick goals constantly, and can hardly keep up with how easily achievements come to you, then great. I’m a little jealous, but I’m genuinely happy for you. For most of us though, our job interview is like a cheap mall glamour photo. Sure it’s technically us, but with enough gel on the lens that we can’t really be expected to be that kind of shiny every day.
Pushing yourself to carry a lustrous glow of perfection from your first day throughout your new career, could be doing more than upping your anxiety: It could eventually kill you. In fact, a study by researchers at the Harvard Business School and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business said that over 120,000 deaths each year can be linked to workplace stress. That means our desire to shine bright like a diamond for our bosses could potentially kill us with greater frequency than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or the flu does each year.
Perhaps, with this piece of perspective, we can pour ourselves a glass of wine on the eve of our first week, and accept that the days of needing ‘A’s are over. Of course, you can strive to do well, to have pride in your work, and to play nicely with others. But if being THE BEST at your new job is keeping you up at night, then it’s time to lay those anxieties to rest before they burst in your brain like tiny overripe tomatoes.
5. You are enough
Lastly, it’s just a job. I know, crazy, right?
It may be a long time coming, or mean everything to you. But regardless of how high you hold your new position, no one said “you must be this good at your job” to be good enough in general. The measuring stick you have against yourself is completely of your own creation. You’re enough.
Go into your new job knowing that regardless of how your new boss likes you, how your team likes your work, or whether you completely screw things up, you’re enough.
There’s always another way, another choice, or another supervisor who will like you, and if you get fired you can pick yourself up and try again. Because the great thing about jobs, just like anxiety pep talks, you can have as many as you like.
