Borrowed Fears

My day got ruined in the afternoon at work and… Hold on…You guys, isn’t it weird how the world doesn’t even give you a break from such things? Like just imagine how cool it would’ve been for the world to stop for maybe ten minutes for you to breathe anytime something bad happens.

Okay, I get it. With the number of people on this planet, we probably would have still been in 2001 if everyone was getting a 10-minute break for every bad thing that happened to them.

Okay, I’m sorry I diverted. I’ve been holding my thoughts all day and didn’t know who or where to share them with. And then I remembered I had a safe haven.
So, as I was saying in the beginning, my day got ruined somewhere in the afternoon. I went to work today all smiley, but everything changed later.

I was working on a very simple project. In fact, it's probably the simplest thing to do at work. Right beside me was someone doing something different but just a little complicated. I was focused for a while, and then I realized the person had messed up. It wasn’t a little mess up. She looked devastated because she had to restart what she was doing.

As I looked at her, I began to get anxious and scared, thinking I was going to mess up just because she did. Meanwhile, we were both doing two completely different things. The funny part is, I started making silly mistakes. I made the same mistake about 4 times and then got so confused.

So I had to step out for fresh air and come back. As I stepped out, I realized I was doing well until I saw my colleague mess up and then allowed the thought “messing up” fill my head. So I had to remind myself that we were doing two different things and we were also two different people. And the fact that it happened to her doesn’t mean I should get ready for it to too.

I believe one thing we constantly do as humans is to prepare for things. We like to stay ready in our day-to-day activities. But sometimes, we unconsciously prepare for things not because we want to stay prepared, but because we've seen it happen to people. And through that, we invite that problem into our lives.

In my case, after seeing how bad things had gone for my colleague, I also psyched my mind indirectly to get ready for any mistakes, and to that particular extent, I went and even got anxious, I made so many of them. Mistakes that shouldn't have even happened in the first place.