Recently, I was on the phone for several hours talking with my daughter who’s living overseas for the first time. She’s navigating a new culture, a new language, and the reality of being far from home.
As she shared her challenges and homesickness, every part of me wanted to protect her. But I can’t. I’m on the other side of the world.
It got me thinking about how fragile everything really is.
Relationships are fragile. Workplaces are fragile. Our health and sense of self can be fragile too.
Where do you find you’re most fragile?
Here’s what I realized: When I can’t control the circumstances my daughter finds herself in, or when a client situation doesn’t go the way I hoped, it comes down to two things.
First, I need to ground myself and have self-compassion.
We’re all experiencing difficult moments in one way or another. The first step is to be present to the challenge, not fight it. Fighting the challenge is fighting reality, and that only drains our energy.
Second, I need to trust the process.
When I have no control, I trust that everyone is doing the best they can. Something will come out of this. It may not be what I hoped for, but if I can look for the silver lining, life gets a little easier.
This shift creates space for positivity. Instead of focusing only on the negatives (which activates our survival mode and clouds our thinking), we start seeing possibilities.
Think about a car driving at night. The driver just has to focus on the first couple of feet lit by the headlights. She doesn’t need to see the entire road ahead. She just needs to trust that if she focuses on what’s right in front of her, she’ll eventually reach her destination.
It’s a simple analogy, but sometimes in life, the only thing we can do is focus on baby steps and putting one foot in front of the other..
What is the next wise step for you when you’re feeling fragility in parts of your life?
As a leader, where do you find you’re most fragile? Is it your performance at work? Your relationship with your team? A health diagnosis that’s shaken your confidence? Or is it the economy creating angst in you?
There’s been a lot of job loss this year. The statistics can be hard to read. For many people, job loss is a real fear, and economic uncertainty is the fragile part of their lives right now.
We often hear about gratitude, and for some, it might seem a little light or trivial given the difficulties in front of us.
But here’s the thing: we have two choices.
We can get stressed out with what’s in front of us, or we can stay grounded and respond with empathy, creativity, and innovation.
Which space do you want to lead your life in?
I can’t protect my daughter from every hard moment. I can’t control the economy or guarantee job security for anyone. And neither can you.
But what we can control is how we show up. We can acknowledge the fragility without letting it break us. We can choose to ground ourselves, trust the process, and look for what’s possible instead of only what’s scary.
That’s not toxic positivity. That’s survival. That’s leadership.
Where do you need to practice more self-compassion today? Where do you need to stop fighting reality and start trusting the process?
Because the fragile moments aren’t going anywhere. But how we move through them is entirely up to us.