Looking to the Future

Monday, February 26, 2018

Do you ever have an event coming up that you are just not looking forward to, indeed dreading? You are mentally counting down the days to when you will have to show up at a time and place that you could quite happily strike off your calendar? That meeting becomes a gnawing presence in your life, making it impossible for you to relax, and difficult to fully concentrate on anything else.

​A trick that I have found helpful is to look beyond the event. This trick does not always completely remove the event’s gnawing tendency, but with practice and constant use it does lessen the event’s effect on your life.

So this is how it works. Come what may you will  have to work through this occasion. But also there will come a time when the event is over. After that your life will carry on in whatever way it usually does. That event, although it feels like the big monster in the room right now, the big obstacle that is taking up all the space in your life, it will come to an end and life will carry on. So I spend time in that space after the event. I tell myself how I will in that future space when the interview/party/meeting/networking event, whatever it is that I am dreading, is over. I can even go to that space during the event if I find myself hitting overwhelm, and it helps me get through it.

This is not a cure all, but with familiarity I find that it lessens the load of those times I have to be somewhere that I would prefer not to be.

What is your experience of dealing with similar situations?