When everything feels harder than it should.

Have you ever had one of those days where one thing after another seems to pile on?

Not catastrophic.

Just irritating enough that by the fifth or sixth thing, you can feel your whole system getting louder.

The email.
The delay.
The conversation that goes sideways.
The oversight, again.
The thing that should have been simple but somehow wasn’t.
The person you suddenly want to reach through the phone, Zoom screen, or inbox and lovingly, or maybe not so lovingly, shake. 😆

That was me the day I started writing this.

It was one of those “why is everything so difficult when it was supposed to be simple?” days.

And I’ll be honest.

I tried the tools.

I reflected.

Lightbulb moment💡: there was a bigger issue underneath all of this that had been leaking into everything. Fine. Noted. 🙄 

I paused.
I breathed.
I walked away.
I went out for my happy matcha.
I came back.
I shifted my state.

And then, five minutes later, another “OMG, are we serious right now?” moment arrived.

Rinse. Repeat.

At some point, I had to laugh at myself because I teach this work.

I live and breathe this work.

And still, there I was, fully agitated.

Which, annoyingly, was also useful information.

Because I knew that state was not going to get me anywhere good.

Not with myself.
Not with the situation.
And definitely not with the clients I was about to sit with.

For me, client work matters deeply. When I walk into a room, virtual or in person, I care about what becomes possible there. I care about whether the conversation actually helps people see something, move something, or access a better way forward.

So while shifting for myself mattered, because truly, who wants to spend the day living inside their own agitated nervous system, knowing I was about to sit with others made me pay even closer attention to what I was bringing into the room.

Before the call, as I took a moment to reset, a question popped into my mind:

Not because I suddenly became Pollyanna.

Not because I expected glitter to fall from the sky and everything to resolve itself.

But because I wondered what might happen if I used the friction differently.

What would have to happen for me to look back and say:

That day mattered.
That irritation showed me something I needed to address.
That friction opened a door I would not have seen otherwise.

That question rattled my agitated brain just enough to create a little space.

So I brought it into one of my executive groups.

I named that I was having one of those days and asked them about theirs.

And, unsurprisingly, they had their own versions.

Different details. Same human experience.
Something was in the air.

What I love about these groups is the caliber of the conversation. These are brilliant, high-performing leaders with sharp minds, big hearts, and a real capacity to hold complexity. And I say that because it matters: even the most brilliant minds have nervous systems. When people are willing to be honest about what they are actually experiencing and look at it together, the lens gets wider for everyone.

So we used it.

We named the grievances. We looked at the friction.
And then we started asking better questions.

What if the thing going wrong was not just an inconvenience, but an opening?

What larger issue might this problem be asking us to address?

What would have to happen?
How would we need to see the situation differently?
How would we need to approach it differently?

That’s where the conversation got useful.

Because when something feels hard, our instinct is often to move quickly from issue to answer.

There is a problem. Find the solution.
There is tension. Fix it.
There is uncertainty. Control it.
There is discomfort. Get out of it.

And sometimes, yes.

Leadership requires action. Decisiveness matters. Clear next steps matter.

But sometimes, in our rush to solve the problem, we miss the deeper question and the bigger opportunity.

Are we responding to the actual issue?

Or are we responding to the threat we feel underneath it?

The threat to our control.
Our credibility.
Our identity.
Our plans.
How we are being perceived.
The version of ourselves we are trying to protect.

Are we solving only for the immediate issue?

The quick fix?

The thing that will make the discomfort go away fastest?

Or are we willing to breathe long enough to see the bigger need, the one the quick fix would never address.

Because when we solve from agitation, we often bring the agitation with us.

We push harder.
Grip tighter.
Defend faster.
Try to force clarity before we have actually created any.

And often, the problem gets louder.

Not because we are doing something wrong.
Because we are human.

The brain can crave certainty. It wants to close the loop and get back in control.

But leadership often asks something different from us. It asks us to create enough space to see before we act.

Because sometimes the fastest answer is not the wisest one.

And sometimes the problem is pointing us toward an opportunity we would not have seen if everything had gone according to plan.

A needed conversation.
A clearer boundary.
A better process.
A hidden assumption.
A place we have been trying to control that actually needs to be reimagined.

This is not about pretending every hard thing is secretly a blessing.

It is about noticing the questions we are asking when things get hard.

Because “How do I make this go away?” will give us one kind of answer.

But “What is this really asking of me?” may show us something else entirely.

More honesty.
More courage.
More capacity.
A different conversation.
A better way forward.

Because sometimes the moment you want to fix immediately is the very moment inviting you to ask a better question.

With love,
Rachel