While it’s true that all work and no play makes for a dull person, avoiding too much work can cause your professional life to suffer. If you’re a hard worker, eventually you will want to be rewarded for your work. While your boss is more than likely a very nice person, it can still be a stressful experience working up the courage to ask for a raise. However, a raise is one of the clear signs that your work is being taken seriously and you are making progress in your career. This makes it perfect for a good Anxiety Challenge — it’s a total win-win situation: you get the reward of a possible raise while stepping out of your comfort zone in a big way!
So let’s get started. The best way to make sure you have everything for this challenge is to be prepared from the start. Sit down for a few moments and write down a list of all of your accomplishments over the last three months, six months, and one year. If you are still new on the job, you will want to try to go as far back as you can. At this step, you can either memorize the achievements, or print them on nice paper to take with you when you sit down in front of the boss.
The rest is fairly straightforward: just sit down and talk honestly and openly with your boss. Let them know that you would like to have a formal performance review where a possible raise can be discussed. You can use your list of accomplishments as a leverage tool to let your boss know how much you really are contributing to the company.
You can consider this challenge “mastered” if you actually schedule and go through with the performance review meeting. This is a very big milestone in your anxiety recovering process as well as your career — by showing your boss that you aren’t afraid to approach them, you will set yourself up to be noticed more for any future accomplishments you build.
While the five challenges are over, there’s still some lessons to be learned. If you’re ready to move forward, the summary of the anxiety challenge is right around the corner!