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The Weekly Practice by MindFittery

Any leadership starts with self-leadership. And that's where this newsletter starts too. Week by week, I'll share a small, practical step to help you strengthen your emotional intelligence so you can lead through chaos with more focus, calm, and clarity.

A frustrated leader and a worried team member, with a jagged line between them turning into a calm wave.
Featured Post

Pause. What energy are you bringing into the room?

Leading Others “Why does this keep happening? I’ve explained it three times, and it’s still not done right. Now I have to talk to them again...” Meanwhile, down the hall: “I’m dreading this meeting. They always seem rushed and upset with me.” Same meeting. Same energy drain. Different reasons. First, a quick check-in: Last week I committed to three morning walks as part of my 10% energy improvement. Result: only one happened in the morning, but I walked mid-morning or in the afternoon...

Leading Self Calendar says: "6 am: Gym" Body & brain say: "6 am: Sleep. Hit snooze." One Idea: Support your energy You know what you should do. Move your body. Sleep enough. Make time for people who fill you up. Fuel yourself with something other than coffee and snacks. And yet, there is a gap between what you know and what you do. You hold your team together all day, work through lunch, and realize at 6 pm that you've barely had any water. (And no, coffee doesn't count as hydration.) This...

Practice Lab From the Toolkit The 1-Minute Reset "Wow, that meeting was tiring!" Sound familiar? We know how to recharge almost everything else in our lives. One Idea: Charging Your Inner Battery Every day, I charge my phone, sometimes twice a day. My laptop stays plugged in so I can work. I charge my watch, even my car. Yet for years, I had no system for recharging my own energy. A few years back, with 5 a.m. calls and workdays running until 6 p.m., I needed to figure out how to sustain my...

Strategic Reset Leading Forward See things clearly & kindly "I don't even remember what happened last month. Things have been so crazy busy, and I feel so behind." One Idea: Balanced Check In As the end of the month approaches, I tend to feel both dread and excitement. I feel dread when my brain fixates on everything I haven't done yet: "There's so little time. Why does it go by so fast?!" In that moment, I'm trapped in my brain's negativity bias, which overemphasizes anything that isn't the...

Pressure Practice Navigating Challenges The Hidden Pressure Lucie, I rated myself a 3 out of 7 in confidence. But according to my 360 feedback, many people see me as fully confident. They rated me a 7. How can that be? One Idea: The Hidden Confidence Gap I see this often during 360-feedback debriefs. There can be a significant gap between how leaders experience themselves internally and how others perceive them from the outside. To others, they may appear calm, collected and focused on...

Who is right? Depends on your perspective.

Leading Others Who is right? Lucie, I keep arguing with this person on my team and we cannot find common ground. What do I do? One Idea: Judgment vs. Curiosity If you've ever felt your jaw tighten while talking to a team member, a leader, or honestly anyone in your life, this one is for you. Last week we focused on leading ourselves: checking in on how we feel, how we want to feel, and what we need to do to feel better. (Catch up on that issue here.) Every second week of the month, we shift...

Feeling Goals

Leading Self How do you feel? Lucie, the breakthrough I still remember from our coaching was when you asked me, "How do you want to feel?" Till then, I didn't really think I could choose my feelings. - a client, a few years after we started working together How have you felt in the last hour? Some form of pleasant emotion Neutral or I even don't know! Some form of stressful, unpleasant emotion One Idea: You have a choice If you asked me two hours ago how I felt, my answer would be "stressed"....