Chapter 1: The Worrier

Overview

Most of us worry a bit. When times are tough and we don t know how things are going to work out, we feel some level of anxiety. This is a normal response.

For some of us, however, the anxiety is problematic . Worry can be quite self-defeating. When it strikes, we think something unfortunate might happen. Often dealing with the unfortunate matter requires clarity, and this is exactly what worrying destroys. As a result, on-the-job worry reduces productivity. It also usually affects the employee s family life and sense of personal satisfaction.

People who call themselves ˜ ˜worriers know they have a problem. Interestingly, some report that when they don t feel worried, they take it as a sign that they are missing something. So they worry about it. Other worriers worry about their worry. That s where a coach can help.

Hartley, the owner of an audiovisual services company, had been a worrier all of his forty-year-old life. He came to me preoccupied with the challenge faced by many owners of small businesses: cash flow. He had twenty employees . Some of his clients didn t pay their bills on time, and he had an inadequate line of credit at the bank. He lived with the worry of making payroll every two weeks and keeping his business afloat.

Hartley acknowledged that his personal spending habits were part of his problem. He would take more money out of the company than he could afford. But he had deep needs around maintaining a high standard of living for his family of six.

Of course, at a practical level, he could have solved his problem by spending less and building a savings pool that could act as a line of credit for times when sales were low or when late payments by clients threatened his payroll. But that was not so easy. Hartley couldn t seem to save any money.

˜ ˜I can t just start saving now, he told me. ˜ ˜My regular payments at home are locked in. I ve got two car leases, a huge mortgage, insurance costs like you wouldn t believe. Cutting down on groceries and long-distance calls would be trivial and would just frighten my wife.

Although he was always worried about money problems, Hartley made it clear he hadn t come to me for financial advice. ˜ ˜The fact is, I ve been in business for eleven years and nothing has really changed, he said. ˜ ˜I do have a constant cash flow problem but I always get through it. What I want help with is the worrying I seem to be doing all the time.

It was debatable whether we could separate his money problems from his worry problem, but I had no problem starting with his chronic worrying.

I asked him to verbalize the kinds of thoughts that go on in his head when he s in bed at night, sleepless with worry. He closed his eyes and attempted to let the feelings fly.

˜ ˜Well, let s say I was thinking of having to call Bill, a customer, about the dates on some project. I might think, ˜Oh, yeah, Bill still has that unpaid invoice from the previous job we did for him . . . says it wouldn t go through their accounts payable system because the receipts weren t attached. It s not fair. If he sits on it, and we don t get that check from Dumont, there won t be enough for payroll again. We ll be $11,000 short. And the line of credit is already tapped out. And it ll take me weeks to get backup receipts. Dumont always pays late. I need more clients. But I can t ask Jim, my sales rep, to cold call. He s a wimp. I can t rely on anybody. But if I pressure Jim, he might leave. Then I d have a huge problem. He could steal clients. Gotta keep Jim happy . . .

I could see tension in Hartley s face. He was wincing. He looked at me as if to say, ˜ ˜See? I asked him where he felt the tension.

˜ ˜It s a tightness in my chest, he replied. ˜ ˜I get it there all the time. It s stress.

There were telltale patterns in Hartley s demonstration. First, his physiology registered his stress and fear, which is understandable since, obviously, worry is linked to fear. The thoughts may come from the thinking part of the brain, the neocortex. But the feelings that accompany the thoughts come from the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for core feelings like fear.

I also noticed the essential ˜ ˜what if . . . construction of his thinking. That s what worriers tend to do: Their thoughts move from one vulnerability to another as they paint themselves into a fretful corner. Even if they set the conscious thinking about the problem aside, they still experience an undercurrent of anguish.

Hartley exhibited yet another defining characteristic of the worrier: a future orientation. Worry is about feeling uneasy in anticipation of things that might happen.