Sequester as a State of Mind

by Vicki J. McCoy

Sequester:  (noun) Automatic cuts in spending; (verb) To isolate or hide away someone or something.

The 2013 sequester, no matter how well anticipated or planned for, is still a game-changer for Federal agencies.  It is painful, and intended to be so.  Agencies are now retrenching, reconsidering normal daily activities such as hiring and contracting.  They are pulling back from priorities to refocus on highest priorities, including how to avoid furloughs and closings.  The current operating environment is one of great uncertainty.  This is something that Federal public sector, unlike the private sector, has been largely protected from, and for good reason:  Federal agencies are established for the purpose of providing services that the American public needs.  The premise underlying their creation is that meeting these needs is important enough to be sufficiently funded on an ongoing basis.  For business and industry, profitability is the goal—no profit, no business.  This is true no matter how altruistic the company’s mission. Uncertainty abounds in the private sector. For the Federal public sector, in contrast, service is the driving purpose, and funding is assumed—no funding, no service. A high degree of certainty has been a given.  Until now.

While sequestration is a hot-button political issue, all sides agree that sequestration has impacts.  And most of those impacts are ones that you and I, as Federal workers (employees and contractors) have limited control over.  We can adjust, adapt, and mitigate, but we can’t control...with one exception. We can control the impact that sequestration has on our thinking.

A natural, human reaction to any downturn in our circumstances, including a significant drop in available cash, is that we will tend to pull back, to contract.  By that I mean we often move in knee-jerk fashion from a mindset that believes the world is a place of abundance and limitless possibilities to a mindset of lack.  The danger of coming from a place where we see the glass half empty is that it stifles our in-born creativity.  Possibilities are still there; we just can’t see them because we are focused on the problem, not on possible solutions.  And this is true whether the problems are big ones or little ones.

Here’s an example of how it works: I went to see visit my young grandson in the hospital recently.  I spotted a parking space near the entrance to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and started to pull in.  Immediately, I saw that I couldn't fit in the space. An SUV was taking up the adjacent parking space as well as part of the one I was after.  Storm clouds formed in my mind, and I fumed at the SUV driver’s lack of consideration.  I was deep into a mindset of lack, where blaming/complaining is the modus operandi and creativity is asleep at the wheel.  The very instant I chose to let go of that mindset, however, I realized that there were many other parking spaces nearby. The possibilities I hadn’t seen became apparent.  (I even felt some compassion for the harried parent or grandparent who may have parked in a hurry, with the same worries on their mind that I carried that day.)

Yes, the impacts of sequestration are real, and far weightier than a parking space, and they must be dealt with head-on.  You won’t get any Pollyanna thinking from me in that regard.  But what we can’t afford is to let sequestration makes us smaller in our thinking or kill our dreams. Let it go from a being a noun to a verb in our lives. In fact, now, if ever, is the time for us to be thinking bigger, more creatively; to be challenging ourselves to be visionaries and to look for the possibilities in this crisis. 

In a July 2012 article in Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/words-can-change-your-brain/201207/the-most-dangerous-word-in-the-world, Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Waldman described the brain chemistry of a negative state of mind this way: “If I were to put you into an fMRI scanner—a huge donut-shaped magnet that can take a video of the neural changes happening in your brain—and flash the word “NO” for less than one second, you’d see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and communication. “  Creativity in negativity?  Not gonna happen.

If there will be fewer people and less money to provide our vital services to the American people, then we in the Federal sector definitely will have to come up with new ways to get things done. We will need all the creativity that resides in each of us to find these ways. Einstein put it well when he said that we cannot solve problems from the same consciousness in which they were created.  Our brains need to be free to make new connections, to see possibilities and solutions we never considered before. We need synergies that can be found between and among people who are willing to let go of the old ways of thinking and doing things to pursue ways that are yet to be realized.  If we sit around staring at the half-empty glass, waiting for certainty, nothing will get done.

For myself, I’m looking at new technologies through which I can bring some of my services without the cost of travel.  I’m working on it with folks who are psyched about the potential. I’ve made a conscious decision to leave the comfort of the familiar for the growth that resides in the land of unknown possibilities. It’s scary but necessary.

I invite you to join me in taking a page from Steve Jobs and asking ourselves not how we can survive the current situation, but what we can create or build in it.

I’m convinced the possibilities are limitless for the un-sequestered mind.