Why this article can help executives: Today’s operating environment demands more than strategy. It demands leaders who can stay grounded, make clear decisions under sustained uncertainty, and model adaptability for their teams. This piece offers a practical leadership lens (impermanence and experimentation) plus simple tools (breathwork, play, meaning) that strengthen executive presence, reduce reactivity in high-stakes moments, and protect performance over the long haul. In short: it’s about building the inner capacity required to lead change, not just manage it.
The Opportunity Upon Us: Change and Uncertainty Are Here to Stay
Regardless of industry, today’s business climate is frantic and unrelenting in many ways. We feel the larger climate of another corporate restructure and more layoffs due to AI at the same time many of us are retooling in AI. We are asked to build our strategy amidst unstable economic dynamics that seem to change every quarter. We search for ways to optimize with more efficiency, risk reduction, and the ability to deliver on our brand promise as consumer preferences change. The bar keeps moving.
It is hard to show up in this moment without self-doubt, burnout risk, or the feeling that we have to double down and execute at all costs. Our responsibilities, goals, and workloads keep growing. And we show up to do this work because our jobs demand it. Because our business is treading water. Because our family needs us. These are challenging times.
Searching the internet, there is a stream of advice articles from Forbes, McKinsey, and Harvard Business Review detailing the opportunity to reskill so you can expand credibility in your field. While these advice articles can help you retool, they do not always help you on the days when you don’t feel your best and the world-weariness weighs on you. This is when you need different advice: the ability to reconnect to your human self as your path through the uncertainty of today’s climate.
Impermanence: Adaptability is a Leadership Skill
The nature of life is change, but sometimes we want to cling to what we know and what we wish could be. We can form an attachment to “ideal circumstances.” When we cling to that ideal, we experience a disconnect or pain when things don’t go as we wish. In contrast, when you choose to live in a more present moment, one that shifts as circumstances shift, you embrace that all ups and downs are temporary. Since you’ve been through ups and downs before, you can also see that you’ve survived these historically with maybe a few scraped knees and some deep lessons. Impermanence encourages adaptability and letting discomfort be temporary as you adjust into new realities. Impermanence asks us to stop trying to create perfect conditions. We simply show up in the now, as imperfect and frustrating as it can be. Because now, not the future, is the potential. Your present self has the ability to let go of old realities that no longer fit you and your future self will find future ways of adjusting.
Amongst my colleagues, I often hear that they wish they had a vision of what the change is leading to. In best practice change management, normally you would receive talking points on what the change is, why the change is happening, and how your business partners will be working through the change with you. But today, we often feel change is happening without knowing where it’s all going. The opportunity is to shift the mindset: maybe we’re just trying new things. Maybe the doing is part of learning. As a leader, this is where you can step up as new voice that encourages experimentation, working through, and removing judgement as the first response.
Breathe Through It: Tips to Prepare for What’s Ahead
I teach my team breathwork because in the type of external change we are living in, breath is our access point to feel more grounded, soothed, and expansive. Breathwork is the ability to consciously direct the flow of breath in different patterns that create desired nervous system effects. For example, inhalation is lively, uplifting, while exhalation is calming, freeing. Depending on the circumstances you are walking into, even 5 minutes of breath work can prepare you, settle you, or help you process what happened. Space encourages reflection and whether your perceived reality has been overblown or crowded by something unrelated. My team now has a space to consider where they put their emotional worry, or if they have a worry at all.
A lot of us don’t notice our breath from moment to moment because we are caught up in other thinking functions. Try these two activities with me and see what space they help develop within you:
- Can you be present with your breath now? How does it feel when breath comes into your body? How do you feel when you release outward? Can you expand your exhalation twice as long as your inhalation? If you are having trouble gauging your breath length, I like to inhale for 2 counts, exhale for 4 counts and then let the breath growth to 3 counts inhale, 6 counts exhale, and so on. Only lengthen to a degree that is sustainable. Now see if you notice how a longer exhalation can soothe fired nerves and return you into a more present self.
- Another breathing technique I share with my team is victorious breath. In this breath, you create diaphragmatic pressure through contracting the muscles deep in your throat while you breathe through your nose. This is not a harsh action. You’ve probably done it before when you fog a window and see the breath obscure the surface. Do this action on both your inhalation and exhalation for 2-3 minutes. Do you notice the energy building within you? What would it feel like to walk into a hard conversation now with the confidence you have built?
Neuroplasticity: Not Too Old to Learn New Tricks
Your brain has the inherent ability to reorganize itself through the formation of new neural pathways. Known as neuroplasticity, the brain is adaptable to our experiences, practices, and even how we recover from injury. When we calm emotions or reduce stress, repeat new skills until they become habits, or challenge ourselves to find new connections through thought or movement, we are contributing positively to our neuroplasticity.
If you’ve ever wondered if you’re getting too old to learn new tricks, I would encourage finding the adaptability pathway through play. Of course, none of us are 3 years old with the grace of making an imaginative fairy forest out of cardboard tubes and dandelion petals. But can we find ways to be more open and do things in a playful way? Try simple experiments with playful intention as a way to see what happens. Can you make a couple of silly paper airplanes? Who cares what they look like or how far they fly! Did your mood change? Did a random idea come to you? Do you have thoughts about trying differently? Play doesn’t mean it is perfect. It means possibility is in process.
When you release external expectation, dive in, and see what happens, your neuroplasticity is growing. In your work life, you can refine any experiments with your market expertise. And those experiments or new skills will start finding more ways to peek in, building innovation and resilience even as your circumstances evolve.
Heart Open and Forward: Meaning Guides the Way
Most of us are in our fields and have cultivated our expertise through passion, grit, and the helpful assistance of others. All of these are human heart-centered qualities, so if you wonder how you can keep pace amidst change, find the place where you can connect and make meaning from whatever is in front of you.
We don’t talk a lot about heart in business, but I like the concept of the heart because when the heart is open, it is available for authenticity, hope, risk-taking, and narrowing our focus on the things that will matter more to us long-term. Openness is the centralizing quality of big picture thinking and as we become more aware of the choices in front of us, we don’t have to fear the future. We simply need to trust our adaptiveness to the future and our inherent human ability to soften with what is happening now and what we can passionately build for the future. Heart is the desire to start and continue forward in change and uncertainty.
