I’m not sure if I take appropriate action as I’ve never done it before.

Change is inevitable when you start something new such as taking up a new position, starting entrepreneurship, getting a promotion in the company, etc.

But I often see people underestimate how long it takes to settle down but changing the environment will need an adjustment that requires a lot more than we initially thought.

Today again, I am going to share the message I sent to one of my group members who have just started a new position in the company and have a lot to learn.

She has been working so hard last year and her efforts were finally acknowledged by the head office and got promoted. She was so stoked and felt so appreciated that she wants to continue to do her very best.

Once she started, the reality hit her so strongly that she started to lose the confidence that she has developed from previous years of working for the same company.

Here I thought of sharing my reply because it highlights the importance of controlling your reaction to your feeling, managing your expectation, and taking everything that happened to us as a lesson.

Here is her message followed by my response:

Here is my response to that:

okay, so couple of comments I can make in regards to the messages you sent me, thanks for sharing that and being honest and open about your situation.

I know I don’t have to get permission from you if I can be really upfront and authentic when I give you my feedback, but I will try to be as transparent as I can by being upfront because I trust your potential.

So first of all, we need to understand we cannot get rid of our feeling nor can we change them, there is no fix. Therefore, the most productive way to deal with your current situation is to think about how to respond to your feeling.

I understand having too many things on your plate will prompt you to be so reactive that you might miss the opportunity to harness better solutions if you take a moment to prevent yourself from being reactive and sink in and take a concrete step. To do that, we need to empower our better side of ourselves so that the wisdom for the awareness starts to come out and the courage to stop you from being reactive wells forth too.

Second, this is the new position you choose to take on and you are like driving a car that is much much faster to control than the one you used to drive. Therefore, it takes a while to get used to the new environment around you.

Also, your default muscle feels like you can’t catch up with the amount of information you need to process in order to get the job done, but the more you practice your muscle to reflex, the easier it gets for sure. So you need to be aware of the time you need to take to get used to it too otherwise, it will only lead you to burnout.

Third, I think it is important that you accept we learn from mistakes. When you said

“I’m not sure if I take appropriate action as I’ve never done it before.”

Yes, and this applies to everyone including myself too. So first time is always a gamble, like guessing and testing. Of course, we will exercise our brains as much as we can so that we can mitigate the potential issues to arise, but still, there is always a possibility of creating issues.

So we have two choices here. Either we take action even if we might make a mistake. OR not taking action so that we don’t have to go through the setbacks although you are not learning, you are not getting any experience.

In this scenario, I am not saying that taking action is right or not taking action is wrong. It all depends on what you want to achieve. You need to be clear about the goal so that your process gets clearer.

In your particular event this morning, you have to be clear about what “the right decision” is for you otherwise, your judgment is so clouded that you can’t judge whether you make the right choice or not. And this “right decision” is different from person to person so the contents of the right decision will change depending on the circumstances. That is where you need to exercise your wisdom I believe.

You won’t find the right answer, but you can CREATE the right answer for your situation because every situation is unique so there is no one answer that can be copied and pasted in every situation.

You are new, so your muscle is not aligned with the current work that you have to deal with every day yet. In the process of developing the muscle, you will go through pain, sorrow, anger, and anxiety as such since we are all human beings.

What we can do I believe is not to get rid of it, but instead, use this negative energy as strong motivation to take action.

I am in the same boat. I am guilty of underestimating the time I need to get used to it, or overestimating my ability to get the job done, but Let’s update the default setting of our old pattern and develop a new one so that we can help more people including ourselves^^