She Tried to Take My Job. Here's What I Learnt From It.

Working in corporate, there is no shortage of pressure, stress, tight deadlines, high expectations and frankly some pretty unhealthy behaviours.

I remember one of my team members once asking why I didn't seem to be as affected as others by people's behaviour, the stress, pressure and demands, and it reminded me of the years before I had discovered thought work.

I have been doing thought work for over 13 years now. It started when I was on a walk and heard a coach on a podcast talk about how

Our thoughts create our feelings, which in turn impact the actions we take and therefore the results we create in our lives.

I never knew that one podcast would have such a profound impact on my life.

Up until that point, like my team member, the stress, demands and other people's behaviour in the workplace did impact me. Had I not learnt about thought work over 13 years ago, it is unlikely I would have had the career I had. Understanding and managing my thoughts gave me so much agency and control over how I performed, how I showed up, and how I led my teams and myself.

But it wasn't always that way. There were countless nights where I would lie awake worrying about work. I would recount conversations, work late into the night and be the first one in the office in the morning. Work always came first, because it was how I defined my worth. I prided myself on my output and was rewarded accordingly. But this dependence on other people's approval takes its toll.

I learnt this the hard way when a new team member joined our team. She was ambitious, presented well and was likeable. I had been excited about her joining, but my excitement was short-lived, as it soon became apparent that she had ambitions to take over my role and team.

At first I thought I must be imagining it, as she didn't have the required experience for her own role, let alone mine. I would watch her talk about things she had no idea about, and see my boss drink it in like Kool-Aid. I remember thinking I was in an alternate universe.

Up until that point, I had always believed, naively, that the people who performed best would be rewarded. That performance in the commercial roles we had was quantitative. But here was someone who wasn't performing in her own role, yet was somehow convincing our boss that she should have her portfolio increased.

Now, this is not a "poor me, how unfair" story. In fact, I am grateful for this person, because it was because of her that I truly understood how my thinking, not her behaviour, was impacting me.

She was just a person acting in a way that aligned with her own values, needs and patterns. But I was letting her behaviour impact how I showed up.

I had abdicated responsibility for my own thinking, treating it as fact that she was aggressive, dishonest and a poor performer. Now, yes, some of that I could have found evidence for. But what I learnt is that focusing my thoughts on her didn't serve me in any way. Instead, it made me fearful, judgmental, protective and reactive.

And when I was feeling that way, it showed in how I showed up. The approval I so desperately needed from my bosses, the approval I used to feel proud of myself, was suddenly amplified. Not because of how my team member was behaving, but because I knew my own insecurity was affecting my behaviour, which in turn made me even more insecure about my position. Needless to say, it was a vicious cycle.

Had I had thought work back then, my experience of that time would have been completely different. I could have separated the facts from the fiction, what I was making her behaviour mean. I could have taken control of how I showed up, rather than handing her control over my emotional and mental wellbeing.

Rather than ducking, hiding and reacting, I could have looked objectively at what was happening. I could have seen how the areas she excelled in were actually my own opportunities for growth.

At the time, I very much relied on my ability to perform and deliver, and so had paid little attention to things like building relationships, frankly, I didn't think I had time. She, on the other hand, excelled at building relationships and connections. I remember marvelling at how someone could not deliver results, yet if they communicated well and built relationships, people didn't seem to mind. (That's another unhelpful thought right there, see how sneaky they are.)

But the truth was, this team member was nothing more than a circumstance in my world. I mistakenly believed she was responsible for making me angry and frustrated, for causing me to react. The truth was, it was how I was choosing to think about her that was creating those feelings.

And knowing that, truly understanding that it was my thought, not her, causing me to feel the way I did, made all the difference. Because suddenly, I was in control. I had agency over myself.

Because the truth is, no one can control how you think. That, my friend, is solely up to you. And so when you're in the workplace feeling stressed, overwhelmed or irritated by what seems to be happening around you, I encourage you to pause and bring awareness to what you're actually thinking.

What are you making the situation mean? Because that is what's causing you to feel burnt out, stressed and overwhelmed, not the thing you're blaming.

And because it is your thinking, you have a choice: to keep thinking that way, or to decide to think something different.

It doesn't have to be a dramatic leap. In fact, it needs to be something you can actually believe.

For instance, I'm never going to land on thinking that team member was a good person. But I don't need to in order to feel better.

What I started thinking instead was: she's just a human doing her best. And that thought gave me a lot of freedom. From there, rather than feeling anger, I could feel compassion. And I can tell you — compassion feels a lot better than anger, and the actions you take from compassion serve you far better than those you take from anger.

So if you're feeling at the effect of everything around you, this week I encourage you to choose one thing that's causing you grief and write out your thoughts about it. Then take another piece of paper and write down some alternative thoughts, ones that could also be true, that feel more neutral.

Loosening your grip on thoughts that don't serve you, and taking responsibility for how you think, is one of the most powerful things you can do. It will completely change how you show up each day.

I've created a short guide where I share the simple 5-minute tool I use to reduce overthinking and process my mental load, you can download it here for free.