. You literally need to stop.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nRight now you’re spinning. Your mind is going a million miles an hour, and none of it is helping. You’re stuck in a negativity spiral, and if you don’t interrupt it, it will keep you there.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nClose your office door. Go for a walk. Take a deep bre<\/span>a<\/span>th. Something to stop the spiral in your mind and help you feel more grounded.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThen <\/span>PONDER<\/span><\/strong> and process everything that is going on. Grab a journal and just start writing. Get it out of your head and onto paper. The anger. The hurt. The self-doubt. The stories you’re making up about yourself. The beliefs that got triggered.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nDon’t try to fix it yet. Just notice what’s there.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBut pondering isn’t just about processing the hard stuff. It’s also about getting clear on where you want to land. So ask yourself: how do you want to feel on the other side of this? More composed? More in control? Like yourself again? What do you actually want to happen here?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSarah did this the night after her meeting. She sat at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and just wrote. It didn’t fix anything. But it slowed her down enough to actually think.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI used to do this too. When something blew up at work, my first instinct was to go, go, go. I’d try to fix it, manage it, push through it. It took me a long time to learn that stopping first actually gets you there faster.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOnce you’ve slowed down enough to actually think, that’s when the real pondering begins. This is also where you start to separate what actually happened from the story you’re telling yourself about it. When we’re spinning, we add a lot to the story in our heads. We turn one staff complaint into proof that we are a terrible leader. We turn one hard conversation into evidence that we don’t belong in this role.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI’ve done this. More times than I’d like to admit. One minute, I think I’m doing okay, and the next, I see myself getting fired. My mind can do crazy things. And I see it in almost every leader I work with.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSarah had to do that work too. She had to see that the actual situation, a staff member who didn’t like being held accountable, was very different from the story she was telling herself, which was that she was the problem.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nShe wasn’t the problem. Though she did have a role to play in what came next, and she needed help seeing that.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOnce you’re clearer on where you want to be, you can start thinking about how to get there, which is the <\/span>PIVOT<\/span><\/strong> part of The Infinite Leadership Loop. This is where you start thinking about the thoughts, energy and actions you need to get to the vision you saw for what you want to happen.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nFor Sarah, that meant figuring out how to have a direct conversation with her staff member again about her actions, this time to make a difference and not have her staff go to her boss. Sarah also needed to address the pattern with her boss so it wouldn’t keep happening.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWith this plan in place, Sarah can <\/span>PROCEED<\/span><\/strong> with courage and maybe even some vulnerability into that conversation with her <\/span>PEOPLE<\/span><\/strong>, her staff and her boss.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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