If you’re living at your edge, going after your dreams and following your ambition, you’re going to get stuck, stressed, and overwhelmed from time to time.

Whenever this happens it’s easy to get lost in the finger-pointing confusion about why this is happening. Your team isn’t stepping up. The market isn’t materializing. The customers have been lying to you. And down you go into a spiral of your own making, clawing your way through your business as you fall.

But before you do this, I’d invite you to take a step back and ask a simple question:

Why is this the moment I’m spiraling?

Most of these things were true an hour ago and will be true tomorrow. But you won’t be spiralling then. You’ll be surfing the waves of uncertainty like you always do.

Maybe you’re spiraling because you haven’t been getting enough sleep, you haven’t exercised in a week, you got out of your routine, or you got in a fight with you kid/wife/boyfriend/partner this morning. Maybe you need to eat something.

Perhaps the thing you’re freaking out about IS really freak-out-worthy. But before you freak out, take a breath and see if you can understand the ingredients of this particular spiral.

This way you might eat a sandwich or take a nap, instead of losing yourself in a bunch of drama that’s at best ineffective, and at worst doing damage you’ll have to repair after you wake up from your self-inflicted business drama nightmare.