It’s been a tough few weeks.
A sinus infection took me out for a couple of days, right in the middle of an unusually rough work week. Being sick drained my energy and made my sleep worse. Last month, we also said goodbye to our dog, Montana. That grief isn’t done with me yet. Those are the big ones, and underneath them sits a long tail of smaller things. Any one of them would have been manageable. Taking on all of that at the same time felt overwhelming.
Somewhere along the way, my belief in myself also wavered. Belief in the things I’m building. Belief that I’m doing any of it well.
Back in March I wrote a story called Feelings Are Data. The argument was that a feeling is information, not an instruction. You notice it, you name it, and you go anyway. That’s easy to write on a good day.
This week I had to live it. Except this time it was all feelings and a mess, or at least that’s all I could see.
My wife, Erin, reminded me of something this weekend: your brain lies to you. It doesn’t do it all the time, or about everything. But in a bad stretch it will tell you things with total certainty that aren’t true, and it helps to have someone next to you who knows the difference.
Right before I sat down to write this, I heard a definition that showed up at exactly the right moment. Leadership isn’t pointing people where to go. It’s walking that direction yourself, so the people around you choose to come along. And for long stretches, it doesn’t feel like anyone is following. It can feel like you’re taking a walk by yourself.
I’ve been a big fan of the idea of self-leadership. Leading yourself means giving yourself the same leadership you’d give anyone else, which makes you both the leader and the follower. On a good day, those feel like the same person. On a bad day, all I can see is the follower. I forget the leader is there, and the follower can’t seem to take another step.
And I don’t have any authority over him. I can’t command my way out of a hard weekend. The follower doesn’t work that way. The only thing that has ever gotten him moving is watching the leader keep going.
Motivation is a feeling, and when it runs out, discipline is what’s left. Belief, it turns out, is also a feeling. When it runs out, what’s left is the path you planned back when you could see clearly: your principles, your process, the decisions you made on good days about how you want to live. You don’t have to believe in the path to walk it. You have to plan it ahead of time.
The process is what got me through the weekend. I kept running it even when nothing felt worth the effort. Not gracefully.
In our house we have a phrase for moments like this: best friend brain. When my head starts telling me a story about myself, I ask what I’d say if my best friend told me the same thing about themselves. I’d have a response in seconds. It was there the whole time. Handing it to myself is the hard part.
I know it’s a cliché, but you really do have to put your own oxygen mask on first. There’s a fine line between taking care of yourself and being selfish, and I think the purpose makes the difference. Taking care of yourself so you can be there for the people who need you isn’t selfish. It’s part of the job. No one follows a leader who’s standing still.
If you lead anyone, at work, at home, in a group of friends, you’ll have stretches that feel this heavy. The good days are for planning the path ahead. If you commit to what you believe and how you want to show up while you can still see clearly, the path will be there on the days the belief goes missing.
Whether you’re a leader, have one, or know one, weeks like this come with the role. A former leader of mine once told me that the higher you go, the fewer bad days you get to have. I believe that. How you show up really matters. At the same time, we’re all people.
Leaders bring the weather. They also feel the rain.
Uncomplicated systems. Uncommon results.