The Question That Stayed With Me
A woman in my recent Enneagram workshop looked at me and said: “Who has time to sit and reflect on your day when the world’s on fire and you’re exhausted?”
I had encouraged the few participants who weren’t able to land on their type as quickly to take time for reflection at the end of each day over the coming weeks. To reflect on their conversations and experiences through the lens of the two types they had narrowed down to and the core motivations of those two types.
I didn’t have a quick answer for her, though. Because she wasn’t wrong. And she also wasn’t right.
I couldn’t help but see the deeper meaning for culture as a whole in what she said.
We’ve normalized exhaustion. We’ve glorified urgency. We’ve convinced ourselves that reacting quickly is leadership.
But exhausted leaders don’t lead. They react. They repeat patterns that sabotage their leadership and creativity. They lose touch with who they actually are.
Reflection isn’t a luxury for leaders who have extra time. It’s the practice that creates time. Reflection isn’t indulgent. It’s our responsibility as leaders.
Leaders who never stop to reflect aren’t actually moving faster. They’re just generating more noise.
And more noise doesn’t leave room for clarity. We can’t lead with clarity if we never stop moving, if we never slow down. Five minutes of awareness can prevent five months of misaligned decisions.
Taking time to sit in solitude and silence helps reduce reactive decisions and the mental loops that steal our peace and our time.
Sitting with our thoughts can be uncomfortable.
But if we don’t slow down long enough to notice what’s driving us, we will keep leading from the very fear we’re trying to outrun — which only keeps us exhausted and stuck in a sympathetic nervous system response.
The world doesn’t need more exhausted leaders. It needs leaders who are steady and grounded in their unique identity and the strengths they bring to the world.
So what is it costing us — not to reflect, but to continue not reflecting?
