Stupidly Stressed
For March Newsletter
I vividly remember the first time someone called me ma’am.
“I’m done,” I thought. “I’m old.”
But being old really didn’t hit until this year when my driver’s license was due to renew.
Last year, knowing that the “real ID” was really coming, I went to the DMV and exchanged my license for a real ID. It wasn’t quite that easy, but never mind. I thought that by doing that, when my license expired on my birthday this year I could simply renew by mail, as I have pretty much every year.
But no. I’m over 70, and the DMV is clearly incredibly ageist. Once you are over 70, to get your license renewed you must take an eye exam (I understand that) and the written driver’s license exam.
I hate tests. And so I got stupidly stressed about it. Failure both loomed and was unacceptable. So I studied. And took the sample exams. And couldn’t help but wonder how knowing that the penalty for dumping animals out of your car is $1,000 was making me a better driver. Mostly, however, I walked around feeling as if I was lugging a heavy stone.
Feeling stressed about things is not a strange sensation for me. I stress about being too busy and not being busy enough. I stress about being on time for meetings—or being too early. And no matter how many trainings, retreats, meetings I do, I still get stressed before. Every. Single. Time.
Stress, I think, is not always a bad thing. The few times I don’t feel stress are the times when things go seriously sideways. And they do because I am not as prepared as I should be.
If fundraising taught me anything, it was the value of being prepared. Of visualizing what could happen, and having a plan if, indeed, that is what happened.
Sometimes, I confess, being prepared meant being able to look really interested and saying, “Tell me more about that,” and hoping it wasn’t too obvious that didn’t know something I should have known. But I am also convinced that being prepared doesn’t have to mean having all the information at your fingertips. It does mean being able to move with the punches and not to freak out when you are feeling lost.
For major gift fundraising that meant knowing as much as I could about my donor/prospect. And knowing even more about my organization and the project I was hoping they would fund. It also meant having conversation starters and probing questions at hand. Stressing about doing a good job usually meant that I was careful to review all my notes, look the donor up in our database (OK, so when I was fundraising, we used files, filled with paper...but they would have contained a profile, maybe several as the profiles got updated; call reports; often newspaper clippings; copies of correspondence) and see what information we had about the donor, their giving, their likes and dislikes, and the ways that they were connected to our organization.
Being prepared didn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t ask questions to which I had the answers. Sometimes how a question is answered—tone of voice, choice of words—can tell you more than mere information.
While too much stress is definitely a negative, a little bit can be a very good thing. stress can help you accomplish tasks and prevent you from getting hurt. It can keep you awake—and as long as that’s not at 3 am that, too, can be a good thing. Falling asleep in the middle of a donor meeting will probably quash any chance you have a getting a major gift.
Most importantly is how you handle your stress about meeting with major donors, doing a presentation, or attending a networking opportunity. The edge that I feel when a little stressed usually makes me sharper. And I find that I am sharper because I am better prepared. And preparation really is the key to being successful.
P.S. I did pass my written exam—which means I need something else to feel stressed about!