“Every time I enter the room, I freeze. I get stuck in my head. I catastrophize.”
I was coaching a client recently about how he prepares for executive team meetings. Leonardo is a VP of Data & Intelligence, and in one-on-ones, he is the sharpest person in the conversation. In the executive team meeting, he says almost nothing.
When you’ve been successful without much stress, it can be eye-opening to be faced with a challenge you can’t easily overcome.
It’s unsurprising he hadn’t developed a routine for dealing with challenging situations. He never had to.
As a leader who had risen in his career, like many, based on natural talents, it wasn’t that Leonardo didn’t have to work hard. It was just that applying himself and his natural instincts had always been sufficient.
But when faced with something that doesn’t come as naturally, and when your historically productive approaches are not working, your fear starts to take over. It has ample fodder to draw from to propel its narrative.
It can point to all the ways you haven’t been able to overcome your hurdle, and that just further reinforces the fear that you don’t have what it takes to tackle this particular challenge.
For Leonardo, he had seen other leaders be minimized for communicating poorly or for supporting an idea that others didn’t agree with. It felt reputationally dangerous to speak up, especially for someone who didn’t feel comfortable putting forth ideas extemporaneously.
What if he suggested the wrong approach or couldn’t string his ideas together in a way that felt compelling or clear? We worked through ways to challenge those fears. He understood all of it. He still couldn’t do it in the room.
When I shared the idea of a warm-up, Leonardo’s eyes opened a bit wider. It sounded so simple and yet, he had never considered it.
The reason why routines matter.
I never thought I needed a routine. As someone who has never needed motivation to get through the day (I’ve almost always loved work and school), I thought it was a waste of time.
Only recently did I learn that a routine can sometimes be essential.
It started with my decision to write online to build brand awareness and followership for my coaching practice.
I’ve always been insecure about writing. It was always easier to avoid than to do the work. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t just writing as I should, as I had throughout my career with every other task. In the past, even when I didn’t want to create a presentation or write a performance improvement plan (neither of which I enjoyed), I somehow found the ability to focus and marshal through.
But something about online writing felt different. Maybe it was because no one was waiting for me to publish. There was no specific person I was going to let down if I didn’t write. Or maybe the connection between publishing and generating business was tenuous at best. Regardless of the reason why, my mind and my body refused. They seemed totally in sync that it was better not to try than to make a misstep and fail.
Even after I joined multiple masterminds and connected with communities of other business builders, all learning how to write online, I still wasn’t consistent and struggled.
The solution?
A warm-up routine: to prepare my mind and my body to move through the fear and not get stopped by it. It’s not ground-breaking or complicated:
I start with a short meditation where I quiet my mind and my body.
I remind myself of the purpose of this work — to help others, and that my imperfections are part of the process, not a detriment.
And then I do some reading. It might be a business book or something that simply interests me. I often find a subject that inspires a thought that becomes the seed for a piece.
On a good day, I go from avoidance to acceptance to action within 15 minutes.
Routines aren’t just habits. They are a way to calm your nervous system and ramp yourself into action.
Highways have on ramps for a reason. Most cars (and humans) need time to get from slow to fast. That’s how a warm-up routine works.
In athletics, the right warm-up can help you improve your performance in your workout or sport. Overcoming something you fear can work on the same principles.
Let’s break down the parts of a warm-up that help you work through your fear:
Starting with small steps makes it easier to see progress.
Aligning your warm-up to the work you want to do helps you feel focused.
Keeping it short helps you accelerate into what you ultimately want to tackle.
Visualizing success or finding inspiration gives you a starting point to work from.
That’s it.
And if you want to add something that feels like a mini reward or an extra source of energy or relaxation, consider environmental elements like the room you choose, ambient sounds or music, a beverage you enjoy, or a scent that helps your mood.
All of those contextual cues help your mind and body associate positive feelings with the work you are about to do. It’s another way to reduce your fear and avoidance.
The goal is to make the experience more enjoyable so that you can do what matters to you, even if it isn’t something you find easy.
What a work warm-up looks like in practice.
Leonardo found that creating a 15-minute buffer window before any high-stakes meeting allowed him to incorporate a warm-up routine.
His warm-up looks very much like mine for writing:
He steps away from the computer to give his eyes a rest and his body and brain a chance to transition from whatever he was doing last.
If he has time, he’ll go for a short walk, which can be energizing if he feels sluggish.
He’ll focus on the agenda for the next meeting and what “good” looks like.
He’ll anticipate some topics that might come up and what he wants the leadership to know or focus on. If there are particularly complex or challenging issues, he might schedule a larger window for his warm-up and even add music to his routine.
When he gets back to his computer, he’ll turn off notifications and close all his windows so that he can be distraction-free.
Then he’ll take a few deep breaths right before the meeting starts.
He didn’t arrive at this all in one go. It took him a few weeks to test different versions, and he’s still experimenting. But just giving himself time before the meeting to transition and set an intention immediately helped.
Even in the first few meetings where he did this, he felt calmer and ready to engage. He didn’t always speak up, but he felt less scared to do so. Eventually, he was regularly interjecting and no longer holding back, even if what he was sharing wasn’t a fully formed thought. There were still meetings where he stayed quiet. The difference was that it was a choice by then, not a freeze.
Testing and building a warm-up routine takes time and iteration.
Over time, Leonardo will find that some practices are still helpful while others he’ll retire. It’s less about what you specifically choose and more about taking the time to acknowledge that you need a way to ramp into the work, especially the work that doesn’t come easily.
It took me several attempts to find an initial routine that worked. And then, funny enough, when that clicked, after a few months, I got bored and needed to refresh it. That’s the thing about a routine: it is designed to become predictable. That’s one of the reasons why it combats fear so well. Our minds are most relaxed when we perceive predictability and certainty.
But if you’re like me, trying to do work that requires creativity as well, sometimes you have to change it up to reinvigorate your creative engine. For me, it looks like different books and different locations for my warm-up process. One thing I want to try before winter is going outdoors. Morning sunlight can be a wonderful way to wake up the senses. I’m looking forward to trying it, and I know that it’ll just be one iteration of many.
Your Turn.
I was allergic to routines for a long time. I thought of them as fads. When I realized they could be a tool for my growth, it was a revelation.
Giving myself permission to develop a process that worked for me and to tweak it over time was freeing.
I’m curious, what’s a task or a skill you have been wanting to pursue but have been putting off? It could be work-related, but it doesn’t have to be.
Would you be open to creating an on-ramp for yourself, a warm-up that makes it feel safer and more enjoyable?
I’d love to hear more about what routine you’d like to try or what has worked for you in the past in the Comments.
A hard chapter may not be easy, but it isn’t a cause for concern. It’s an opportunity to build your leadership toolkit and maybe unlock far more than you ever expected.
May you lead without limits,
Kathy
If you found this post helpful, consider giving it a ❤️ so that more leaders can get the support they need.
Consider sharing it with a friend who might be struggling to navigate something difficult. Perhaps a warm-up is something you experiment with together.
The idea of an on-ramp really stayed with me. We ask people to move from one demanding context straight into another and then expect their attention, judgment and presence to arrive instantly too. I’m increasingly curious about what changes when we treat the transition itself as part of the work.