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Welcome to episode 263 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. The idea for today's episode comes from an article by Kathleen Smith, How Anxiety Distorts Your To-Do List. Now, this is on her paid sub stack, so I'll put a link in the show notes, but you will probably hit a paywall. However, I will say that it's only $5 a month to subscribe to her articles, and I think they are well worth it. I don't get any commission or anything. I don't even know Kathleen Smith personally, but I will tell you that her work is work that I follow on a regular basis. What her article made me think of was the Spotlight effect. The spotlight effect is a cognitive bias where you overestimate how much others notice you. It can cause self-consciousness, anxiety, and poor judgments. The idea here is that you think there is a spotlight on you at all times, highlighting your mistakes or flaws for others to see.

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However, the research is clear that people actually pay far less attention to you than you think. Smith doesn't mention the spotlight effect, but here are the questions that she asks in this article that make me think of it, and I'm going to read these verbatim. That colleague is wondering why you haven't sent her that document. Your friend is annoyed that you haven't called. Your mother is wondering why you haven't told her your summer plans. Your boss is waiting for an update. The folks in the congregation think you disappeared. That random person who emailed you thinks you're rude for not responding yet. Your child needs your undivided attention at all hours. Your partner needs you to be more of a cheerleader for their goals. The connection here is that you are making assumptions about what other people are thinking. This It is the spotlight effect. You believe that people are thinking about you more than they are, and this increases your anxiety. Of course, your assumptions could be true, but you don't know for sure. When your anxiety increases, you are more likely to make poor decisions or to react in unhealthy ways. Smith writes, But what I'm also observing in myself and others is how the level of anxiety in a system can distort our perception of what people need from us.

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Humans are scenario builders, and the fanciest parts of your brain were built to guess what people are thinking about you. When I really step back and look at my to-do list, I begin to realize how much My sense of urgency is generated by the sensitivity to relationships and not the actual facts. To me, this is where taking responsibility for self is so important. The first question to ask yourself is, What is the story that I'm telling myself? When you do this, you can begin to realize that you are making assumptions that may or may not be true. Sure, your friend might be annoyed that you haven't called, or your mother might be wondering why you haven't told her your summer plans, or your boss might be waiting for that update, but these are assumptions you don't know for sure. The first step in taking responsibility for self is regulating your own anxiety. You can acknowledge that this is the story you are telling yourself, but you can also acknowledge that it might not be true, and you can be thoughtful and intentional about your next step. A couple of helpful questions would be, how can I move forward in a healthy way?

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What would it look like to take responsibility for self? Smith suggests asking, what does this person really need from me right now? Regardless, if you want to move forward as a non-anxious leader, it helps to understand what people need from you and what they don't need from you. According to Smith's article, there are three things that people will often need from you, and the first of those is facts. If you don't want people to imagine the horrible scenarios that you think they might be imagining, then you need to manage expectations. Smith describes this as letting people know what they can expect from you, letting people know what you can do and what you can't do. This is the self-definition component of self-differentiation. It's taking a look at the situation and saying, This is how I can move forward. This is what I can do. This is what I need to communicate. Using some of Smith's examples, you can define when you can send that document to the colleague or when you can give an update to your loss or when you can call your friend or your mother. Notice you are doing this before having any contact with the other in which you might get defensive or be reactive in some way.

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The second thing that Smith says people need from you is contact so that they are relying less on their own imagination. This is the emotional connection component of self-differentiation. If there is heightened anxiety in the relationship system, healthy emotional connection helps to reduce that. The third thing Smith says people need from you is to manage your own anxiety. This means being thoughtful and intentional about how you will proceed in healthy ways as well as regulating your anxiety so you don't have it spill out on them, so you don't get defensive or blame them because you think they are giving you a hard time when you don't even know if they are. This is why not making assumptions about other people's thoughts and intentions is so important in taking responsibility for self. Smith also notes three things that people don't need, the first of which is unnecessary apologies. This not only sounds like excuses that they might not be looking for, but it can result in defensiveness. My experience is that when I get defensive, people actually start worrying about the things I thought they were worrying about. They wonder, Well, why is he being defensive?

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What's going on here? What's he hiding from me? Self differentiation, taking responsibility for self, is being clear about what you can do without making apologies. The second thing people don't need from you is avoidance. This is the opposite of contact or emotional connection. We know from family systems theory that when there is too much emotional distance, there is an increase in anxiety in the relationship system. If people don't hear from you, if there is no emotional connection, if you are avoiding them, then they are more likely to start to make up the scenarios that you feared. Finally, the third thing that Smith says people don't need from you is for you to manage their anxiety. As Edwin Friedmann said, self-differentiation is knowing where you end and another begins. This is about taking responsibility for self and only self, not taking responsibility for others and for their feelings. The important thing here is that when you take responsibility for yourself and not the other, it can reduce the overall anxiety in the relationship system. It creates healthy emotional space in which the other has a better chance of actually managing their own anxiety. It might not work out that way, but it will be much more likely than if you destroy healthy emotional space by trying to manage their anxiety.

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The question is, what does this look like in practice? I may have shared this story before, but I think it's worth sharing again because it's a great example of the importance of not making assumptions about what others are thinking. First, a little background. The annual conference in which I serve in the United Methodist Church has been paired for a long time with another annual conference under a single bishop. The annual conference is a geographic region of churches. In 2021, our annual conference was realigned with another annual conference, a different annual conference under a different bishop, and we were calling this new realignment an affiliation between our two annual conferences. That was also the time that I was hired as a contractor to develop the Center for Vital Leadership for both annual conferences in the affiliation. To help to establish this new affiliation, the bishop was doing a series of town halls across each of the annual conferences. I believe there were eight in all. These were in-person town halls with a virtual component. About a week before the town halls were to begin, I got a call from the Chief Program Officer of the Affiliation, and she asked, rather matter-of-factly, Bishop wants to know which of the town halls you will be attending.

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My anxiety level shot through the roof. I had not planned to attend any of the town halls. And of course, my assumption was that Bishop expected me to be there. I took a long time to respond. First, I had to get a hold of myself, and then I had to think through what a healthy response would be. I had to come to terms with the fact that if I attended these town halls in person, even some of them, I wouldn't get near the amount of work done that I had planned over the next several weeks. I think it's important to note that sometimes we think the other person needs an immediate response. And yet, when we take time to be thoughtful, when we self-regulate, when we think through our goals and values, when we think through what self definition looks like, we have a better chance of responding in a healthy way. The two competing values in my mind were, I want to be a team player, but also I actually can be more useful doing the work that I was planning to work on rather than being a face at an event. I finally responded by saying, I hadn't planned on attending any of the events, but I will if Bishop wants me to.

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The response was immediate. Oh, okay. Bishop just wanted to know. This illustrates another important point that I have made in the past, and that is, surrounding togetherness pressure often is internal. We make up what we think other will want. And this is the point of Kathleen Smith's article. I was making an assumption about what Bishop wanted, and if I had gone down that road, I would have ended up attending those meetings even though it wasn't necessary. Of course, another response could have been, Does Bishop want me at these events? We probably would have ended up in the same place, but I have found that I grow as a non-anxious presence. I grow as a non-anxious leader when I practice defining finding myself while staying emotionally connected. Taking responsibility for self requires you to know your own goals and values, to think about what's important to you, and then learning how to express those things in healthy ways while staying emotionally connected. The best way to do that is to not make assumptions about what other people are thinking. That's it for episode 263. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter.

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I'll put a link to that in the show notes. You can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. I love to hear from you. I love hearing your questions and your ideas for future episodes. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.