I usually look forward to business slowing down a bit in the summer, but this year, when my workload started to slacken, I caught myself starting to worry (probably because I wrote a column about it last month), thinking “What if—?” You know the rest! Right?
So I stepped into my husband’s office and asked him for reassurance.
I didn’t ask for a review of our financial status, or go into a soliloquy on all the reasons I thought the sky was falling as a way of circuitously trying to get him to convince me I was wrong (a technique I learned from my grandmother).
I simply asked him to tell me we were going to be OK. He did, and I went back into my office and had a productive afternoon.
This incident prompted me to think about how important it is to give and receive reassurance, especially right now when so many of us are under the stress of change and economic pressures.
I feel very fortunate in having long-term relationships with my clients, because a connection over time in itself provides reassurance.
JOB SEARCH FATIGUE
When I ask my professional colleagues what they are finding the most challenging in the current economic climate, they talk about how they are giving everything they have and using every tool of their trade—every assessment, every exercise—and yet clients are becoming so frustrated and discouraged they are at the brink of giving up.
When finding work takes much longer than expected, how do you keep people from dropping out of the process? How do you encourage them to keep moving forward when the rewards are not immediately apparent? The answer is, reassurance.
I feel very fortunate in having long-term relationships with my clients, because a connection over time in itself provides reassurance.
When Walter Cronkite died on July 17, the obituary in the New York Times noted that he was “a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one.” Watching him consistently over the years gave him the power to make us feel that everything would be all right and that we would somehow get through “the way it is.”Likewise for my clients, a word or a gesture from me at just the right time, or a moment of shared vulnerability, excitement or laughter, can go a long way toward lifting the heaviness of the burden they are carrying, and these gentle intimacies take time to evolve.
All I can hope for when I work with a client is to get them to the point where they feel they are doing everything possible to advance their goal.
This includes vigilance in sustaining a belief in themselves, which is why I speak and write on subjects like combating worry and building a community of support. Once this is in place, if they feel disheartened because it is taking a long time to see results, I can sincerely say to them, “You’re doing all the right things.”
WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN …
It’s not just situations in which we experience loss that can throw us into a tailspin. Positive events often create just as much need for reassurance.
I have a client who for over two years has been doing all the right things to make a transition from owning her own business to working for a non-profit organization.
She did extensive information interviewing and took a volunteer position to learn the dynamics and language of the field. She executed a program of formal education and self-study to acquire credentials and confidence. She learned to articulate the value of her experience unapologetically and stand tall in her authentic self.
She applied for and got a position with an excellent salary and was able to negotiate the terms she wanted.
Then she panicked. Intellectually, she knew she was qualified, and that in the eyes of the unemployed she was very fortunate, but still she felt overwhelmed by how her life would change if she accepted the offer.
Reasoned arguments were useless because she had crossed a line where logic could not reach her. She could only hear reassurance.
LESSONS FROM OZ
Remember what happens in The Wizard of Oz, after Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion finally get in to see the Wizard?
Instead of granting their wishes, the Wizard tasks them with bringing back the Wicked Witch of the West’s broomstick. They set out together for her castle, but now there is no Yellow Brick Road to follow. They have only each other to rely upon.
In trying to find work, after the well-defined steps of preparing for and executing your launch into the marketplace are completed, you enter an amorphous space, where, like Dorothy and her friends, you are asked to do more, to persevere when there’s no clear-cut path to follow and all you see is uncertainty.
What sustains Dorothy is her companions. In dark, scary, trackless places, it will always be the reassurance we get from people we have built solid connections with over time which will carry us through. All we need to do is ask for it.
