Would You Take Someone Else's Problems?
If everyone in your group wrote their biggest problem on a piece of paper, dropped it in a hat, and you had to randomly pick someone else's problem to take home as your own, would you participate?
Most people say no. Because as hard as your situation is, it is yours. You know it. You have context for it. That question is not meant to minimize what you are going through. It is meant to remind you that the person next to you is carrying something just as heavy. You are not uniquely burdened. You are just human, in a room full of other humans pretending otherwise.
And yet most leaders I know are lone-wolfing it completely.
This week I had five separate coaching calls. Different industries, different situations, different stages of growth. Same two words kept coming up. Overwhelmed. Stressed. Not as a complaint. As an admission. The kind that only comes out when someone finally feels safe enough to say it out loud.
Here is what I have learned about overwhelm after years of building businesses and coaching founders. It is not a feeling that arrives from nowhere. It is a cycle. And I think about everything in three categories. The mud that drains you and needs to be eliminated or delegated. The gold activities that recharge your energy and keep you at your best. And the diamond work that actually moves your life and business forward but somehow never feels urgent enough to protect. When the pressure builds, the gold and diamond activities go first. The mud fills everything. You become less creative, less present, less capable. Which creates more pressure. And when the energy is gone, most people reach for the fastest exit. The extra drink. Scrolling at midnight. Fast food. I get it. These are not character flaws. But every one of them deepens the hole. I break this down in full in my recent newsletter. Read it here if you have not already: The Liberation Question Nobody Thinks To Ask.
The way out is not willpower. It is replacement.
Start by scheduling your diamond activities before anything else gets in. Non-negotiable. If it is not on the calendar with a hard boundary around it, the urgent will eat it alive every single time.
Then protect your gold activities like you would a meeting with your most important client. I meditate at least twice a day. It is non-negotiable for me. Physical movement, time in nature, quality sleep, good nutrition. Not rewards for finishing the hard things. The foundation that makes you capable of doing them well.
And if you already meditate, I want to challenge you to go deeper. I have been exploring something that takes stillness to another level entirely and it has changed how I manage my energy day to day. I went deep on this in a dedicated piece and I think it will change how you think about stillness entirely. Read it here: Why I Gave All My Clients the Same App.
Here is the thing though. Most people try to fix the cycle alone first. They optimize the calendar, clean up the habits, push harder. And it helps, up to a point. But there is a point where working harder on the wrong things just digs the hole deeper.
The single fastest thing you can do is stop lone-wolfing it.
Last Thursday I hosted ten successful Central Texas business owners for dinner here in Austin. I asked the group one question: what keeps you up at night? At one point someone shared something genuinely vulnerable. The kind of thing most people keep buried because they are not sure the room can hold it. This room could. The moment it landed, the whole table exhaled. Every single person there recognized the weight of what was said. Not because they had the same problem, but because they were carrying something too. I wrote about what happened that night in full here: The Room Proved It.
That is what happens when one person stops pretending it is fine.
You do not need a formal group or a dinner to get there. You need one person you trust and fifteen minutes of real conversation. Full disclosure, I have been on both sides of this. The leader pretending it was fine and the one who finally said it out loud. The second version is better. Accountability is underrated. Most people know what they need to do. They just do not do it alone. If something in here landed for you, reply and let me know. No agenda. I just want to hear from you.
Overwhelm is a pattern, not a personality. And when you start breaking the cycle, something opens up on the other side that is worth working toward. I wrote about what that feels like this week here: Being in the Flow.
And the moment you say it out loud to the right person, something shifts. Every single time.
Until next time,
Mathias