This is a follow-up to my last blog on why Outages are Blessings in Disguise.
Introduction
Imagine that it is 2 A.M. and you are woken out of a sound sleep to attend a bridge call about an APM outage. After you join in, you discover that you have been unknowingly given the ability to read people's minds and directly feel their emotions. What would discover? How would you react towards them?
You would likely find these two mind states:
1. The Contracted Mind
During times of stress (such as outages), some people are filled with low confidence and are driven by emotions such as fear, anger, doubt, or anxiety. Some of the questions they could be pondering are:
- Will I lose face or my job because of this?
- What other things am I doing wrong?
- If only I did....
- What can I really depend on?
By dwelling on questions like above, the attention is taken away from the present and the problem at hand. Their scope is quiet narrow and likely will miss subtle messages that a log or metric analysis will show.
Recognition that we are in this mind state is the first step of breaking out. This could be followed by pausing before further action is taken, re-focusing on the issue at hand, and diving back in.
2. The Reflective Mind
Others may be more philosophical -- "stuff happens." They have a higher degree of confidence and a wider scope of the world. They pause, deliberate, and then react. If they were on such a call, they might be asking questions such as:
- Do I have all the right resources on this call?
- Have we accurately defined the problem?
- Are we noting as we are going along the things that we are doing to solve this issue and how we could do it better?
- How can we ensure that this issue never happens again?
And thinking like this, the likelihood of issue resolution increases.
You can see the tremendous difference between the two worldviews. One drowning in a river of emotion, the other dedicated to the issue before them. Which did you choose the last time a stressful situation happened to you?
I want to conclude with two items:
First, the story of Mohini. She was a White Tiger being kept at the Washington Zoo. For most of the time there, she lived in a 12 by 12 cage. There was those that wanted her to experience greater freedom, so a far larger enclosure was built. But instead of seeing the larger space, Mohini stayed in an area that was still 12 by 12. So it is with the contracted mind.
http://itrustican.blogspot.com/2011/09/story-of-mohini-white-tiger.html
I end with this quote from Mark Twain -- “I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Here to wishing that your life be filled with happiness and be free from self-imposed stress.