Software for Your Head

ANTIPATTERN: RECOIL

PROBLEM

After achieving something of significance, you experience a feeling of hopelessness, anxiety, or guilt, and a sense that the achievement was without meaning altogether.

After a meaningful achievement, the individuals on a team often experience a “correction” in attitude. We call this phenomenon “Recoil,” because that's what it feels like. Perhaps the empty feelings of Recoil follow the law of physics: For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. It seems as if some great censor in your head warns you, “Don't get used to feeling good and realizing all that potential. If you get used to feeling good all the time, just think how disappointed you'll be when everything goes to hell. Like it always does. ...