Zoom Out Technique

This morning I attend a meeting where I know very little and in my own area, I am not confident of the updates I have and on carrying out the follow up items. I am anxious but at least I observe it instead of trying to running away from it. That’s a good progress. At the same time, I am thankful of my colleague who teaches me about the zoom in vs. zoom out. He mentioned that when we face situation, we may tend to do zoom in which means we just focus on me and my problem or me and my performance. That is when we are anxious and do self-defeating behavior. One way to overcome it is by zooming out. It can be one level up or even can be several level ups. I did not understand and so I asked him to explain further. Here it goes. Now I feel very inferior because I could not produce graphs or nice slides. I also could not design tests and carry out troubleshooting quickly. That is when I zoom out. How to zoom in, I can go to the family level or team level. For my family, how important is that? Do they define me based on my incapability of doing tests or data analysis? Then, for my team, am I that important that it will jeopardize the whole team? The answers are no. If we zoom out bigger, like in a community where I stay or the department or the company where I work. Would my incapability cause anyone harm? How much it matters in the company level? It may translate very little. So the job is still important, because it may affect someone or at least myself in a zoom-in mode. Therefore we need to continue improving it. But even when I fail, let’s not allow it to define myself. Let’s remember too that this process is needed to reach the goal. For example, this ability to switch from zoom in to zoom out and vice versa are needed. Without zooming in, we may be careless. Without zooming out, we may be too stressed that we can also not deliver what we can.