When you hit a wall

A client described last week as "the week from hell." And honestly, I've heard that quite a bit lately.

Some weeks just break you. No matter how well you've been managing your energy or how much progress you've made, a particularly brutal stretch can knock you sideways and leave you wondering why you're doing this at all.

You might have been building better rhythms, protecting your energy, leading well, and then one relentless week makes it feel like you're back at square one.

Here's what I want you to think about when that happens: You are built for this, just not indefinitely.

Thankfully, we humans are well-suited to pressured sprints. Periods of intensity, stretch, and challenge.

What gets us isn't the hard week, it's when the hard week never ends.

Chronic, sustained stress without recovery will inevitably lead us toward misery, burnout or both.

How you interpret the pressure also matters more than you might realise. Kelly McGonigal's research makes the point that if you believe stress is destroying you, that belief becomes part of the problem.

If you can see a brutal period for what it is, a tough stretch, rather than a permanent state, and build recovery around it, you are far better positioned to come through it intact.

The sprint isn't the enemy, but what you tell yourself about the sprint might be. And burning out for a job is not a leadership strategy.

If you're in one of those weeks right now: get through it, build in recovery, and then look honestly at what got you there, because that's where the answer to working more sustainably lies.