We love a clean slate story.
New year. Fresh plan. Big intentions. A neat little line in the sand.
But your nervous system didn’t get the memo.Because leadership isn’t just cognitive. It’s embodied.
Even if your diary is empty (very unlikely!) and your inbox is “under control” (almost impossible!!), your body can still be carrying last year’s residue:
• the constant urgency
• the micro-stress of being “on” all the time
• the invisible weight of decisions you made under pressure
• the pace you normalised because you had to
And then February arrives and we do what so many leaders do: we sprint.
Same speed. Same expectations. Same internal pressure.
Just with a different month at the top of the page.
Emotional carryover is real (and it’s sneaky)
Carryover shows up in ways we don’t always label as “stress.”
It can look like:
- getting irritated faster than usual
- feeling flat even when things are going well
- a tight chest before a meeting you’d normally handle fine
- procrastination that isn’t laziness - it’s overload
- working hard, but never quite feeling “caught up”
Your diary might not show it.
But your nervous system does.
Leaders don’t just need a plan. They need a reset.
Not a dramatic reinvention.
A conscious reset.
Because if you start the year in the same internal state you finished it… you’re not leading forward. You’re leading from last year.
And this is where “being human, on purpose” matters.
It’s choosing to notice:
“What am I carrying?”
“What pace have I normalised?”
“What do I need to release before I rebuild?”
My February reset experiment: discipline in the morning
Over summer I listened to a podcast where John Butler talked about the idea that through discipline comes freedom.
That line stuck.
Because I know myself: if I have later meetings, I can let work dictate my wake time. I’ll sleep in, and suddenly the start of the day is gone.
And then I’m reacting.
Not leading.
So my small reset for February is simple:
A consistent early start each day.
- healthy breakfast
- exercise
- productive work before the day gets noisy
Because consistency is calming.
Because discipline creates space.
And because starting the day on purpose changes how I show up for everyone else.
The real leadership question
What would it look like for you to reset before you sprint?
Not just setting goals.
But settling your system.
Not just “what do I need to do?”
But who do I want to be when I do it?
Because bringing who you are to how you lead doesn’t start in your strategy.
It starts in your state.
What’s one small reset you could commit to in February - so you lead with intention, not carryover?
#MichelleSalesLeadership #Leadership #HumanOnPurpose # LeadershipCoaching #RealLeadership
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