6 Ways to Beat Fear and Anxiety at Work

In a fast-paced career when you’re constantly between meetings with multiple actions to close, it can be difficult to give your time to think about the stress you are under.

Sometimes stress can be beneficial in the right doses, and can even help your performance, but when things get too much, it’s worth taking a step back and first acknowledge to yourself that it’s happening, then ask yourself what is causing the stress and fear, and why it’s having such an affect on you.

In fact there are a number of questions I ask myself to help put things into perspective. When I go through these questions, I eventually feel much calmer and able to start thinking more clearly to find a positive way forward.

Reasoning with yourself like this can be the first step to resolving stress and anxiety. Once you’ve asked yourself these or similar questions, you’re then in the right frame of mind to start to address the trepidation that’s affecting you.

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Fear and anxiety can be partly caused by fear of the unknown, not building strong enough relationships to have challenging conversations, and knowledge gaps that need closing.

Let’s explore how these can be addressed.

1. Re-frame your Situation

The table above with my questions and example answers flag a few observations. Firstly the narrative I created for myself when in a state of anxiety is that I can’t succeed unless I take on considerable amounts of work.

This may be caused by perceptions created by others that they are working exceptionally harder than most, or the perception I created that excessive work is a path to success. There are other ways I can manage this.

Firstly I could look at how much I’m delegating tasks and if the answer is “not enough”, I can start to empower others to take on work, especially if it helps build their skills. This frees me up to do other tasks more effectively and start to think more clearly.

Secondly, I need to feel comfortable enough to tell someone that I have too much work. This is where I need to have a good enough relationship with my boss or other leaders to tell them that the work is beyond what one person can do right now, however, I would make sure I have an action plan in place including delegating.

If the delegation approach doesn’t resolve the situation, I could also ask for priority calls from those who I’m working for.

Growing in leadership is not about doing more, but getting more done, even through others, whilst influencing situations that would otherwise slow down progress.

I would now reframe the overall situation to focus on a new narrative, such as:

• I’m overcoming each challenge that I’m faced with (even if it means slowing work down or delegating)

• I succeed through others and develop other peoples skills along the way

• I’m building more solid working relationships.

2. Keep Learning - Fight Fear with Knowledge

As fear at work can be about not knowing something that you perceive you should know, or that others already know, it’s important to have a plan to acquire the knowledge or skills that you are missing.

It’s not realistic to acquire full-stack development experience when you have never written code before, but you may need to learn a programming language that’s relatively new to you as an already experienced developer, or you may need to know how to create meaningful reports using a project tracking tool that you’ve never used before.

In this instance, we have many learning tools available to us such as YouTube, LinkedIn learning, Udemy and even Google search. The key is to set aside time to close your knowledge gaps to a level where you feel more comfortable, and if you can’t set aside the time by yourself, this is a good opportunity to negotiate some time to be dedicated for knowledge building.

3. Short, Medium and Long-term Goals

The path to resolving fear and anxiety isn’t often fixed in a day, but can be done incrementally. Keeping it simple by giving yourself clear actions that you can commit to will help you begin to feel noticeably better each day.

Remember to make this list achievable with short term “quick wins” as well as longer term actions. A list could look like this:

4. Healthy Habits

When challenging work situations arise, often the last thing that comes to mind is going for a run or playing tennis with friends, as it can seem counter intuitive, however, research has proven that physical activity can be highly beneficial for stress and anxiety.

Exercise is known to reduce levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, whilst decreasing muscle tension which can help lower the feeling of anxiety.

Aerobic exercise can also improve cognitive performance and enhance cognitive control and retaining attention, which is important when you’re under a high stress situation.

When I’m feeling anxious at work, I’m more likely to stay indoors and become less active, although I remember a number of years ago when I experienced a period of high stress and anxiety, I did take up running. Doing this regularly helped to reduce my stress, anxiety and helped to build my confidence as I felt much more energetic and able to think more clearly.

I would definitely advocate exercise as a way to manage stress and the associated fear of going to work.

5. Relaxation techniques

As well as contributing to reduced stress, relaxation techniques can also help improve sleep quality and can enhance your overall sense of well-being amongst other benefits.

Here are some examples:

• Deep breathing, such as inhaling deeply for a count to 4, holding your breadth for a count to 4 and exhaling for a count to 4. Also try the 4-7-8 method (below).

• Mindfulness techniques, some of which can be found in apps like Headspace.

• Take part in hobbies unrelated to work to take your mind off it, helping you to get back to work with a fresh perspective.

• Add humour. Include fun or lighthearted moments in your otherwise challenging and serious day.

• Take regular breaks. I found that when highly stressed, I tried to work all day with no breaks, however this may have made matters worse. Try taking short and regular breaks throughout the day to help you recover from previous meetings or tasks and prepare for the next meeting or task.

• Connect with co-workers. In this age where remote working is so common, we seem to make less time for social moments with team members, and are often isolated, which can reduce the number of positive relationships and alliances at work. Instead, make time to get to know some of your team members without the need to talk purely about work.

6. Build a Support Network

As much as it’s important to build co-worker relationships, it’s also important to build a network of people who can help you get through challenging times, but also support you to develop yourself at the same time, which should improve your overall resilience and ability to withstand greater challenges in future.

The most prominent and successful leaders are not afraid to seek advice, coaching and mentoring from others with more experience, as having a support network is seen as a credible shortcut to growing expertise and building character.

Zuck

Founder and CEO of Facebook owner Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, was mentored by Apple Co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs in his early years as a tech founder. Without this guidance from Jobs and multiple other leaders, “Zuck” may not have been the success he is today. Tristan Wright, an advisor to businesses and entrepreneurs highlights the following in his Medium article:

“Jobs imparted to Zuckerberg the significance of assembling a team that shared his dedication to creating quality products and services. This counsel proved instrumental in Zuckerberg’s role as CEO and President of Facebook”.

It was said that Jobs and Zuckerberg often took walks in Palo Alto California, discussing Facebook’s management and development approaches.

Hoffman

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman also had mentors including Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Tseng and Johann Schleir-Smith (if(we) social network), John Lilly (Mozilla) and Aneel Bhusri (Workday).

Hoffman believed that having multiple mentors with different areas of expertise helps to build a more rounded professional.

Dell

Michael Dell, Founder and CEO of Dell Computers, was mentored by Lee Walker, serial entrepreneur and first President of Dell Computers, when Dell was a young upstart with much to learn.

Walker was vital in building Dell’s confidence and educating him around leading and scaling rapidly growing businesses.

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