When Leadership Overwhelms: The Counterintuitive Art of Stopping
How conscious pauses create the bridge from problem to possibility
Yesterday, I found myself sitting in my living room, staring at my laptop. I had just gone through a challenging week: an earthquake in Bangkok, volatile business engagements, and relationship struggles. Two days ago, I'd made a mistake that hurt someone I cared about deeply.
I wasn't moving. I couldn't move.
Sometimes, life feels overwhelming. Sometimes, you reach your limits. Sometimes, it’s not fair.
We like to imagine life flowing like a calm river. But the truth is, life speeds up, crashes against rocks, and sometimes hits what feels like a dead end.
My first instinct in moments like these isn't always wisdom and grace. Instead, I feel the urgent pull to fix things, to push harder, to run faster.
I want to outrun the discomfort. To power through.
And I suspect I'm not alone in this. As leaders and founders, we're often taught that persistence and hustle are the answers. Keep going. Work harder. Never show weakness.
Yet in that moment, something different happened.
The Invitation to Stop
I closed my laptop.
I took a deep breath. And then another.
I put one hand on my chest, the other on my stomach, and simply met what was happening. The tightness around my heart. The anxiety in my belly. The fear.
Gangaji, a spiritual teacher whose wisdom has guided me, puts it like this:
"Stop telling your story right now. Not later, when the story gets better or worse, but right now. When you stop telling your story right now, you stop postponing the realization of the truth that is beyond any story. All effort, all difficulty, and all conditioned suffering are in the resistance to stopping."
Sounds simple, right?
Stop. Breathe. Meet what's happening.
Yet simple doesn't mean easy.
From Resistance to Flow
Stopping to meet difficult emotions feels counterintuitive in leadership. We worry that if we pause, everything might fall apart. The company needs us. The team needs us. The clients need us.
But these moments of pause often become a bridge - from problem to possibility, from resistance to flow.
After sitting with my emotions, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not like a lightning bolt of insight or a sudden burst of joy. Just a slight easing.
I wasn't suddenly happy. I was still sad, still facing challenges. But I wasn't paralyzed anymore. Not anxious in the same way.
I had crossed a bridge to a different relationship with what was happening.
The Practice of Human Leadership
The leaders I most admire, the ones who create truly human-centered businesses, have all developed some version of this capacity. They know how to pause in difficult moments. How to meet what's happening without immediately trying to fix or escape it.
Sometimes the pause is brief - a few deep breaths before responding to a challenging email. Sometimes it's longer - a day away from the office when navigating a major transition. The duration matters less than the quality of presence we bring to it.
What might change in your leadership if you allowed yourself to pause when things get difficult?
Maybe that's what human-centered leadership is really about: not the perfect absence of problems, but the courageous presence with whatever life brings to our door.
Warmly,
Marc