Everyone deals with physical pain at some point, maybe more than we know. And my hip has essentially staged a workplace revolt against the kind of workouts I've built my entire morning routine around: the early alarm, the hard training session, the physical thing that makes the rest of the day feel possible. That version of my morning isn't available right now. So instead I'm walking. One hundred and forty miles of cobblestone streets, unfairly beautiful light, and a pace that France keeps insisting is perfectly lovely.
It's not, for the record, my pace.
Every morning, I lace up my shoes, thinking today's the day I feel like myself again. And every morning, France hands me a croissant and a narrow stone alley and says, " Maybe not today, sweetie. (I should mention I hate "sweetie.")
Here's what I've been turning over on those slow, genuinely civilized walks: we don't talk honestly enough, as leaders, about what it's like when the specific thing you rely on just isn't there.
We talk about burnout. We talk about boundaries, protecting energy, and building resilient systems. But those conversations tend to assume we're working from a reasonably full tank, that our sleep is okay, our movement is intact, our routines are in place. They're conversations about optimizing the version of us that has full access to our tools. What we don't talk about is the version that doesn't.
I've had a good week professionally. I've shown up for calls, made decisions, and handled things that needed handling. But I've also been aware, in the background, of a kind of flatness. The creativity is running a little slower. The resilience is thinner. The stuff that'd normally roll off me is taking a few extra minutes to shake. Nothing anyone else would probably clock, but I know it's there.
The coaching, the frameworks, the self-awareness work we do as leaders, it's all designed around the version of us who showed up rested, fueled, with her usual rhythm intact. That version's real and capable, and she's done good work.
But the job doesn't wait for her.
The decisions come when they come. The team needs what it needs. A client has a crisis on the exact Tuesday your hips are being dramatic, and you haven't had a real workout in two weeks, and you're nine time zones from your own couch. And the team isn't watching the version of you that you'll be again in six weeks when everything settles. They're watching the one that exists right now.
I think there's something important in that.
Real resilience, the kind that actually serves the people around you, isn't about performing wellness. It's not about projecting a confidence you don't entirely feel and hoping nobody notices. Your team can feel the difference. They always can, and the more experienced they are, the faster they'll sense it.
What it's actually about, I think, is knowing what you need to function, being honest with yourself about when you don't have it, and not pretending otherwise. Because there's a difference between "I'm having a hard week, and I know why" and "I'm having a hard week and I'm attributing it to everything except the real thing." The first version lets you stay calibrated. The second gets messy.
I'm going to figure out the hip situation. I'll find the thing that gives me back some version of what I'm missing, even if it looks different than what I'm used to. In the meantime, I'm shuffling through some genuinely stunning French villages at a pace that France finds entirely reasonable and that I find mildly insulting, and staying curious about what gets built in the gaps.
Because the conditions are never going to be perfect all the time. Not in France, not at home, not at any point in a career that actually means something to you. The version of yourself that shows up when everything's working is great, but she's not the whole picture. The question is who you are when the routine breaks down, when the thing you relied on isn't available, when you're shuffling instead of running, and you've still got a full day ahead.
That version of you is worth developing, too. Maybe even more so.
What do you lean on when your usual tools aren't in the toolbox?
Sarah Shepard writes the String by String newsletter on LinkedIn, where she covers leadership, operations, and the real texture of building something that lasts.