Fear of a new job: how to believe in yourself
How to overcome fear of a new job? The answer to this question is both complex and simple. First you need to understand the main reasons for fear that lie deep inside. Is it really a fear of work or a fear of something else?
After spending eight years in the same office, I realized that it was time to change something. However, as soon as it came to finding a job, I was seized by a real panic. The new job was scary to the knees. Can I handle it? How will the team meet? Will your relationship with your boss work out? Have I lost my business dexterity and flexibility of thinking in eight years in one place? What if I don't pass the trial period? The fear of a new job was simply paralyzing …
During the Soviet Union, labor dynasties were held in high esteem. It was considered very prestigious to work all my life in one place or in the same work collective. And if there was fear, it was not about work, but before the boss or the opinion of the team. “He worked his way up from a locksmith apprentice to a production manager”, “Thirty years ago she came to the company as a young graduate”, “He is one of those specialists whom the plant raised from its own personnel, having trained them at the expense of the enterprise”, “Her whole life passed before the eyes of the collective”- such phrases were once often met in work biographies.
Much has changed since then, including the views on the track record of being a good professional. Today, an employee who sits in one place all his life can hardly be considered promising. The statement that every five years it is necessary to change jobs is becoming more and more popular in order not to lose professionalism and to have a sufficiently varied experience that increases your value as a specialist. Resumes and entries in work books are becoming more and more voluminous. As a result, more and more people feel fear of work.
I want to change jobs, but I'm afraid …
In my case, it was so. After several years in one place, the job change was daunting, even though the change seemed to be for the better. In the old team, everyone knows you and does not require you to “get the stars out of the sky”. And the work is habitual to automatism. What if in a new place you have to face something that you have never done before? What if I don't have enough knowledge? After all, you can easily disgrace yourself, sit in a puddle, get into a mess. The fear of a new job can seriously and permanently poison your life, turning the long-awaited change into a protracted, destructive stress.
By the way, I never got accustomed to one of the new jobs. Every morning I woke up thinking that I was afraid to go to work. The team remained alien and aggressive, almost no one spoke to me. The headmistress gave incomprehensible tasks, without explaining anything and without going forward. The office seemed uncomfortable and hostile, and each new day only added frustration. The only plus was the salary, and I forced myself to go to work, hoping that everything would work out. It was a real hard labor. Three or four cigarettes, smoked every morning in front of the entrance, drove to nausea, slightly dulling the sticky, nasty fear. In the evenings, alcohol was used to combat stress … Even many years later, this negative experience is remembered as a waking nightmare.
How to overcome fear of a new job? The answer to this question is both complex and simple. First you need to understand the main reasons for fear that lie deep inside. Is it really a fear of work or a fear of something else?
I'm afraid to go to work
My friend Olya worked for several years as a manicure master in a small private hairdresser. And then suddenly she decided that it was time for her to grow up, and went to the courses of massage therapists, after which they promised to arrange her in a large health center. At first, Olya caught fire with this idea and seemed to be glad of this turn of fate, but the closer the day of graduation approached, the sadder my friend became. In the end, she admitted that she was afraid to go to work: after a small salon, the wellness center seemed terribly frightening to her. She almost stopped eating, at night she dreamed of dissatisfied clients who scandal and dishonor her in front of new colleagues. The fear of not getting the job done, making a mistake, doing something wrong, or showing herself in a ridiculous light became her obsession. It got to the point where her blood pressure jumped at the thought of work,sweaty palms and lack of air.
Alas, Olya did not cope with this fear and is still sawing other people's nails in her small salon, and her masseur's diploma is gathering dust among old postcards and documents. At the same time, she is a really good masseur, as her friends and relatives have long been convinced of, having experienced the skill of her hands.
This skill could be appreciated by other people, if it was not so scary for her to become a part of the new team.
Fear of a new team
New people are almost always difficult to get along with. And it is doubly difficult if these people are your new work collective. What are they saying behind your back? What do they think of you? Noticing every misstep and every mistake? Gossip and talk about your clumsiness and mistakes? It is very difficult to become your own in a well-established, close-knit team. And the thought that you will have to be a stranger and a black sheep in a new "working family" for a long enough time can poison the joy of the most wonderful, prestigious and highly paid job.
Two points usually come to the fore here. First, the fear of change, which is common to many people with an anal vector. New people, like everything new in general, appear to them as a threat, a source of danger, an unknown and therefore frightening factor from which you do not know what to expect. Secondly, visual self-doubt and increased sensitivity to the opinions of others, which inflates fear of a new team.
A couple of years ago, the company I worked for had a massive layoff. My colleague Anton just panicked at this prospect. What can I say, if he had a clear fear of looking for a job, let alone changing it. When he submitted his resume, his hands were shaking, you could hear it by the way he nervously clicked his mouse. And when they called him about an interview, he just changed his face … “How am I going to work there? I don't know anyone there! And this is a completely different end of Moscow! - he complained hysterically after the next interview.
Another colleague, Nina, after being notified of the layoff, became depressed and even sobbed at times in front of her computer monitor. "I am so used to all of you … How will I work with strangers?" she said through her tears. At the same time, her heartbeat intensified, palms were sweating and headaches began. The fear of a new job completely ruined her last days in our friendly team …
Fear of the boss
Among the fears of working alone is the fear of the boss. If only because, out of the blue, you can get it without even changing your place of work.
This happened to my brother, who left for another city, tempted by the offer of a world-famous manufacturing company. At first it was not easy for him in a new place, he had to overcome both the fear of a new job and the alienation of the team, to get used to new responsibilities … After a few months he completely got used to it, passed the probationary period, became friends with colleagues, and began to go to work with pleasure. It was then that thunder struck: the head of the enterprise was replaced. Instead of the previous boss, who, in fact, invited a nonresident worker to his place, an aggressive tyrant was appointed as the head. This one began his "reign" with a total suppression of any personal initiative of his subordinates, with rudeness and personal insults …
Alas, not everyone was able to overcome their fear of the new boss, including my brother. He had to quit his job and leave the city to which he was getting used to it with such difficulty and persistence …
In every person's life there are times when he is afraid of losing his job or, having already lost it, is afraid to go to a new job. This may be due to the fear of change, fear of a new team, fear of not coping with work, disgrace, not being up to par, etc. However, whatever fears accompany the process of going to work, it cannot be avoided. Life dictates the need to earn and support ourselves and our family … And the less stress and fears accompany the changes in our work biography, the more successful and happy we will be. Sometimes this requires very little, for example, to complete the training "System-vector psychology" by Yuri Burlan and get rid of the fear of work forever. Free online lectures coming soon - join to find out more! Register here.
