How to handle stressful weeks using conscious leadership principles
Two days ago (Friday) marked the end of a week full of friction.
It was one of those weeks where a ton of unexpected life admin and work preparation happened to land in the same four days. Nothing negative, nothing awful (thank goodness) but several big tasks with urgent deadlines.
To make it more interesting, my husband was travelling for work, which meant our children needed more connection, calm, and care at home.
It's been stressful. It's been pressured. I felt overwhelmed at points just because there was so much going on.
I found myself with lots of open loops in terms of decisions and tasks. This meant a higher-than-usual cognitive load, which is always tiring.
Here’s how I dealt with it using conscious leadership principles. I will point out that I realised this on reflection, rather than consciously using those principles ahead of time!
Don’t get me wrong: it was still a stressful week, but I realised that using these conscious leadership principles really helped.
Below are the five principles that helped me shift from chaos to (slightly more) calm.
Regulation
This was undoubtedly the MVP of the week: regulating those tough emotions. I also brought in the principle of awareness to notice how I was feeling. For me, the regulation piece was through naming emotions exactly and giving myself permission to feel that way. I did a LOT of slow, deep breathing, particularly when I felt more anxious. Another regulation piece which helped was talking it all through. Thanks again to my sister who copped an earful when we spoke on Wednesday! It was probably less a conversation to start, and more of a download from my side.
Prioritising some lifestyle fundamentals made the emotional self-regulation much easier. In my case, this was making sure I got more sleep when I could, which was definitely not every night. I’ve also found that avoiding sugar during stressful times works really well to keep my mood more balanced, positive and consistent.
Ownership
Essentially, ownership means taking responsibility for your personal actions, choices and communication. Two questions were particularly helpful during last week:
1. What can I actually do anything about?
2. What is outside of my control?
Without realising, I’d been using Stephen Covey’s Circle of Concern model. The Circle of Concern is so helpful for processing our stresses or concerns. It helps us categorise our worries and concerns based on their outcomes:
Can you completely control the outcome? When the answer was yes, I completed this task and closed that loop.
Can you influence the outcome? This helped me take constructive action where I could.
Is this something that’s concerning you, but you have no influence or control over the outcome? In that case, you should let it go. This was so helpful. Once I identified those worries I couldn’t do anything about, I could park them, then redirect my time and energy in a more useful way.
Progress not perfection
Whenever I am stressed, I default back to longer-established habits and stress responses. This is not a unique talent to me – it tends to happen for all of us. For me, my default stress mode is perfectionism. During this week, I kept reminding myself “done is better than perfect.” This mantra helps stop me sliding back into perfectionism, where I tend to focus on tasks which keep me busy, but don’t move me forward. Progress not perfection was all about taking constructive steps forward this week, even if those felt like ant-sized steps.
Self-compassion
Self-compassion goes hand in hand with progress not perfection. Being kind to myself really helped this week. That looked like kind self-talk, rather than getting annoyed with myself if (when) I wasn’t getting as much done as I would have liked. I took Kristin Neff’s approach of what would you say to a friend going through the same thing? That could be
You’re doing your best
This is a hard week
Be kind to yourself and help yourself through this
Kind self-talk is vital for resilience and means we don’t add shame on top of stress.
Boundaries
Setting boundaries around my time was incredibly helpful this week. This principle was one I planned ahead: I blocked rehearsal time for my upcoming keynote, and blocked out after-school hours with my children while my husband was away. I realise this is very much a perk of being self-employed: the idea of blocking out time when I was teaching was unrealistic, as our work days were much more inflexible and not within our control. In those situations, I would revert back ownership and using the Circle of Concern to work out where and how I could set boundaries within the limits of my job at that time. Setting boundaries ahead of time helped me prioritise what was really important right now.
Conscious leadership in real life
I’m writing this on a flight to Jakarta, where I’m opening day two of a conference with my new keynote on congruence. Many of those open loops have now been closed, delegated, or postpone, so I feel much lighter and more focused.
When I reflect on the week, I can see how conscious leadership helped me manage stress more intentionally, and shifted me from reacting to responding. Next time you find yourself in a similar whirlwind, try these principles to adjust your perspective and take a small step forward. One conscious choice at a time makes life smoother, even in the messy weeks.
If you’d like to explore how conscious leadership can enhance your people’s performance and wellbeing this year, I’d love to connect. You can get in touch by email or book a call to chat.
Dr Sarah Whyte helps leaders get their REPs up—retention, engagement, and performance—through the Conscious Leadership Advantage. A leadership and resilience expert with two decades’ experience working across finance, law, technology, and health, Sarah equips leaders to stay grounded, connected, and commercially sharp with her warmth, humour, and authenticity.
