Listen to Your Body...Before Your Hands Turn Blue

“The uneasy truth is that you can han­dle a great amount stress until, sud­den­ly, you can’t.” — Kevin Lawrence

I put a lot of effort into pre­sent­ing a sim­pli­fied ver­sion of the prin­ci­ples in my book, in Mon­tréal, because I want to make a greater impact on audi­ences about how the 17 habits can help to man­age their ener­gy, clar­i­ty, team and growth. It’s impor­tant for peo­ple to get that, at the end of the day, lead­er­ship is a men­tal game.

After the keynote, many shared their stores about how the con­tent res­onat­ed and was mean­ing­ful, to them. Two sto­ries stuck out:

• One was from some­one who had lost their spouse, a few years ago, to men­tal health issues which led to a med­ical con­di­tion that end­ed his life pre­ma­ture­ly. It had been a painful expe­ri­ence, but she had come out notably stronger because she had seen a ther­a­pist and done the work. This is a great exam­ple of what I talk about in Chap­ter 6 Deal with Your Emo­tion­al Junk. By doing the nec­es­sary work, these chal­leng­ing and trau­mat­ic events can be an addi­tion to our lives, rather than a per­ma­nent trauma.
• Like many very suc­cess­ful peo­ple, anoth­er CEO said she would just keep push­ing through when she met an obsta­cle or an issue, ignor­ing her body’s signs to get her atten­tion to stop. One day, she got a big wake-up call when she noticed her hands were blue — yes, lit­er­al­ly blue, like the char­ac­ters in Avatar — and found out that her body had gone into a shock-like state, emu­lat­ing a con­di­tion in the body where the blood drains out of a part that is threat­ened. Like in cave­man days, when a per­son was bit­ten by an ani­mal and the body respond­ed to make sure they didn’t bleed out. She also had Bell’s Pal­sy, a con­di­tion in which the mus­cles on one side of your face become tem­porar­i­ly weak or paralyzed.

This was one of the cra­zi­est sto­ries I’ve heard, but I’ve seen sim­i­lar things with high-per­form­ing lead­ers. Soon­er or lat­er, strong, smart, deter­mined peo­ple who just keep push­ing through are stopped in their tracks – and it can be spec­tac­u­lar­ly dra­mat­ic when it happens.

The Chal­lenge

• Lis­ten to your body. What are the sig­nals your body gives you when you are stressed?
• What do you need to do about it?