You've got that covered
Thought patterns that trip us up
Observations and Annotations is a newsletter exploring leadership, psychology and organizational dynamics through real life stories.
As I’ve written about before, I spent a good deal of my twenties consumed with being a “nice” person. Obsession might be a better word. I fretted whether I was nice enough, whether I’d done enough for others. Spent hours listening to friends, then wondered if I talked too much. I worried I wasn’t doing enough to be nice to others — despite having a full throttle focus on it. Over time I realized these thoughts led to a maze without escape. Trying to be nice made me way out of whack. It made me miserable.
Once I noticed this pattern in myself I saw it in others.
A friend put her career on hold for three years to take care of her mother who required constant care. Longing to be a good daughter, she put her own needs aside over and over. Even though siblings lived closed, she bore the brunt of care for her mother. When her siblings criticized her for not doing enough she wondered if they were right. Every time she took time away from her mom to focus on work a small worry lodged in the back of her mind— maybe she was selfish. Meanwhile, her career floundered, she lived in a city she despised and despite wanting a relationship she was single.
A CEO yet again waited far too long to let someone go of who wasn’t performing. Numerous conversations and interventions made little difference in their behavior. Taking full responsibility, the CEO worried he hadn’t done enough. He kept asking himself, “Have I done enough? What am I missing? What else can I do?” The team grew frustrated at having to take up the slack of the person not performing. The CEO spent hours devising new ways to describe the problem to the employee. It was time they could have used instead on company strategy. When the behavior didn’t change, the CEO mentally berated themself over and over. Eventually, he fired the under-performing manager. Looking back he realized trying to do enough delayed the decision by six months — during which everyone suffered.
Repetitive questions like “Am I being good to others?” or “Have I done enough?” are common in my work. They reveal the contents of our head, what consuming our thinking. They’re usually a sign we’re fixated on a trait often about how they see themselves.
In each case, there was plenty of data to suggest the answer to the repetitive question was yes -- you were doing enough. I was thinking of others — to the detriment of myself. My friend was a helpful daughter and sibling despite it harming her career and personal life. The CEO was extending himself on behalf of the team at risk of his well-being.
I call these well-grooved mental pathways what you have covered. They’re patterns so well worn they’ve part of our daily life. We no longer need conscious thought to perform them. We’ve achieved unconscious competence but think we still have to work at it. It’s an interesting dissonance.
These patterns are glimpses inside our heads, reflecting where we’re out of balance. Our thought patterns amp up the dial. It’s self-created stress. (I’m referring to behavior that’s not related to mental health conditions) These aren’t harmless little quirks, negative repetitive thoughts cause real pain. They affect the way we make decisions, think about problems, the risks we take, how we interact with others. The key is understanding when your repetitive thinking is helpful and when it’s become negative.
When we’re stuck in a well-grooved pathway that causes stress what we need is closer to the opposite of our preoccupation. Rather than give more energy to others, my twenty-something self needed to find a better balance between taking care of others and myself. Eventually, my friend set aside her worries about being selfish, persuading her siblings to hire full-time care. She moved to a new city 1,000 miles away and resumed her career. The CEO equalized the responsibility equation. They held others responsible for their behavior rather than taking on too much themselves. They developed a rubric to help them know when they’d done enough. This shortened the cycle and reduced everyone’s suffering.
These examples center on being good enough to others in a relationship. What we have covered isn’t exclusive to relationships. A few other repetitive questions I’ve seen: “Did I do exhaustive enough research?” (a deep thinker who relies on data), “Am I working hard enough?” (despite working harder and longer than most), “Am I good enough to do this job?” (a person feels like an impostor).
The commonality in these thought patterns is often whether we’ve done enough.
Many of us continue to worry about something we have covered. We spend hours focused on doing more of a behavior where we’re already over-extended. Instead, we need to confront where we’re out of balance. We need to consider if we’ve built our identity around a pattern that’s on steroids, to be willing to change our behavior even when it means dismantling or easing back on parts of us that are core to our identity.
Stop to consider the narrative running in your head. What’s the thing you have covered? (hint: look for repetitive questions you ask yourself) What do you need? How can you find balance? Letting go of this tricky thought patterns will bring you back in to equilibrium and give you space to think about other challenges.
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Written by Suzan Bond, a leadership consultant and former COO. You can find me elsewhere on Twitter and Medium.