Misuse of Imagination

Yesterday I received an email from one of my clients, let’s call him Tom, who was excited to share what had happened in a meeting he’d had with his senior manager and how relieved he was that it had gone so well.

The day before, I’d had a session with Tom in which we talked about this meeting. He told me he was dreading it, felt anxious and had been worried about it for days. Tom had just started in a new job and discovered details about this senior manager that affected his whole attitude towards him. Tom is a true ‘people person’ and he was very concerned about how to relate to his manager at this upcoming meeting, after finding out that this man was so different from who he thought he was. Tom felt he could no longer trust him and wondered how they could continue to work constructively together in the future.

In our session we talked about how we could turn his thinking around. The information he discovered had not yet been confirmed, but that didn't stop Tom from creating negative scenarios about how all of this would lead to a disastrous future working relationship or worse, perhaps that he would have to leave his job.  

Isn’t that what we do so often as humans? We have been given this wonderful tool called ‘imagination’ that helps us to be creative and innovative, to come up with solutions and ideas that we want to realise and that move us forward.

Unfortunately, all too often, we misuse this powerful imagination to create doom scenarios, horror stories and terrible futures that stop us in our tracks, drive us down a rabbit hole, and leave us feeling stuck and fearful.

How about we stop trying to fix something that doesn't exist?

How about being more curious than worried?

What if we’d catch ourselves, notice our unhelpful thinking and shift our attention from our worries and fears to the other person and become curious about them? What is really going on? What does the world look like through their lens? What if we could come to believe that in general everyone is doing the best they can with the information that is available to them at the time?

Tom wrote in his email to me that he noticed a difference in his usual thinking of “bracing for the worst so to be prepared for it”, to a more optimistic mindset of: “nothing is impossible”. He called what happened during the meeting: “a wonderful example of how questioning assumptions and being open can yield positive outcomes”.

It does not mean we'll never be worried, but we can choose to no longer let fear be in charge.

Let’s Lead!