From Panic to Gratitude at Work

From Angie Hooper: It's funny sometimes to think about how much I use my Option Process training at work when I started to study it for reasons that I thought were completely separate from my career. Just the other day, an email came through from an email address that gets high priority and some of the words in ALL CAPS. The email ended with a tersely worded request for additional action "and this means YOU Angie". Did I panic? No. Did I panic in the past when I read similarly worded emails? Yes. Was it a new response because I was using the Option Process? Yes.

My default setting used to be to rush to respond to an urgent request, assuming I'd caused the problem (whatever it was) while a litany of self-recrimination played as background music to my work. This time was different. How? I pretended it was happening in the playroom. I stepped back and reread the email with curiosity and excitement like I was trying to understand word fragments from Eric, and asked myself some questions about it. What's going on, why did this request come in now, why the particular wording? But the most important question was this: how can I be useful to this person? I actually forgot to worry about things like whether I was being blamed and put the effort into how to express my love and gratitude for having a job by giving a great response.