When Katie Palmer, scientific editor of Quartz, was studying at university, she studied anxious rats. The project looked at the biological differences between two groups of rats bred by temperament; researchers separated them as little ones from their mothers and sorted them into groups, whether they were crying or just chilling. In the end, Palmer says, she found nothing too noteworthy.
On the contrary, I say, because in the process she discovered an interesting management metaphor.
In the workplace, most of us can classify ourselves as anxious rats or cold rats. The anxious rats are worried that they are about to be fired every time their boss plans a one-on-one. They skip themselves over small mistakes and lie awake at night while making remarks they made during meetings. Every project they work on – cheese wedges, open rubbish, whole slices of pizza – is, according to them, a secret referendum on whether they are smart and capable.
The cold rats experience the same potential stressors at work, but respond in different ways. They accept that they will inevitably make mistakes, and try to learn from them and move on. When someone says their job is garbage, they know it’s a compliment because rats love garbage! They are confident with the higher-ups and go upright to sniff them instead of curving into the corner. They present ideas enthusiastically during brainstorming sessions, but do not take them too personally when things are not going well. Chill rats are fun at office parties, and they find karaoke not endearing at all.
Given the option, most people will probably prefer to be chill. But we do not necessarily have to choose. Our temperaments are shaped by genetic and environmental factors, and if we have descendants of rats or grew up in a dysfunctional nest or were bullied at rat school, it makes sense that we tend to tremble.
What’s more, depending on the details of someone’s situation, anxiety may be completely justified. It is understandable that many rats in a time marked by dismissal and closed enterprises, not to mention grief over widespread disease, isolation and racial injustice, feel jumping. We do not know exactly what is going to go wrong in our lives (there are really so many possibilities), so why not be afraid of every deadline and Zoom call just to be extra prepared?
Well, because it’s exhausting to think so, and it does not help us to avoid unemployment or other disasters. The trick for an anxious rat is to understand that although they cannot magically turn into a cold one, they can go to therapy and learn self-mitigating behaviors – such as meditation and diary – that will help make work feel less overwhelming.
Another lesson from anxious rats is a reminder that simply participating in activities that make us happy can increase one’s chills, even under stressful circumstances. A 2013 study, published in the journal Neuroscience Letters, first conditioned rats to associate a certain sound with a slight shock. Researchers then tickled one group of rats (an activity they were shown to enjoy) once a day for two weeks before being exposed to the sound, while another group received no tickling. The study found that the tick rats were less stressed than the control group when they heard the narrow sound – a model, as Scientific American explained, of ‘how the good things in life can help alleviate the bad’.
So if you feel anxious at work, then take an indication of the rats. Make time in your personal life for the things that tickle you – the positive experiences that pierce you through life’s otherwise stress-inducing scenarios. ‘Doing fun things’ may seem like an obvious advice, but as someone who struggles with anxiety knows, the worse we feel, the harder it can seem to get away from a nerve-wracking situation and do things we love. .
My own tip, as a professional with anxious tendencies, is to keep a close eye on the cold rats around you, just as a nervous pilot closely watches flight attendants when the plane becomes turbulent. Note how messages from the CEO do not make it panic; how they refuse to be intimidated by the prospect of taking over as head chef at a famous Parisian restaurant, for example.
By learning from their example, we can begin to question our own terrible narratives; to ask ourselves, “how would a cold rat react to this situation?” and act accordingly. After all, our brain is more malleable than we think. Aside from genetics, there is a cold rat in every anxious one.