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Your phone buzzes, the email lands, the call comes in.
And in a single moment, your stomach drops.
A key client is not renewing.
A deal you were counting on falls apart.
A diagnosis, a bill, a phone call you never wanted to get.
For a lot of us, the instinctive response is simple: panic and fix it. Right now. All of it.
The problem with your crisis brain
Recently, I sat with a high achieving client who had just found out his biggest client was not going to renew. In one call, he lost 30 percent of his annual revenue.
You can imagine the spiral.
What am I going to cut?
How do I replace that revenue?
Who do I need to call?
What if this is the beginning of the end?
Within minutes, he was mentally rewriting his whole year.
Here is the thing about moments like that: our brains are terrible decision makers when we are flooded with fear and adrenaline.
We convince ourselves that everything has to be solved today. Every variable, every what if, every worst case scenario. We start thrashing - making lists, talking to ten people, trying to pull twelve different levers at once.
And because we are in reactive mode, those decisions are usually driven more by emotion than by wisdom. We cut things we should keep, cling to things we should let go, make promises we cannot sustain, and create problems that we will have to clean up later.
Most of the time, it is just not true that everything has to be decided right now. But it feels true in the moment, which is why we hit the panic button.
A slower, more faithful response
With this client, as we talked, it became clear that while the situation was serious, it was not immediate. He had a couple of months of runway. Payroll wasn’t going to bounce the next day. His family wouldn’t be be evicted the next week.
What he needed in that moment was not a color coded rescue plan. He needed to step away from the panic button.
Here is the pattern I want to invite you into the next time something blindsides you:
1 - Slow down
When you feel your chest tighten and your brain start racing, take that as your cue to stop, not to sprint. Stand up. Take a walk. Get outside for five minutes.
2 - Pray honestly
Bring the whole mess to God as it is. Not cleaned up, not spiritualized.
“Lord, this feels awful. I am scared. I do not know what to do. Help.”
You are not informing Him of something new. He already knew this was coming long before you did.
3 - Acknowledge that it is genuinely hard.
You do not have to pretend this is fine. Losing a client, getting bad news, watching plans fall apart - it stings. Name that. Let yourself feel it without immediately trying to fix it.
4 - Give yourself a 24 hour rule.
As a general practice, do not make big, irreversible decisions when you are running hot emotionally. Sleep on it. Let your nervous system settle. In the morning, the situation will usually look a little different. Not magically solved, but less like the end of the world.
This is not passivity. It is choosing to respond out of peace instead of panic. It is an act of trust to say, “I am not God. I am not the one holding the universe together. I can pause.”
What changes when you stop trusting panic
If you begin to live this way, a handful of really important things start to shift.
First, your decisions get better.
You still act. You still problem solve. But you do it with a clearer head, a calmer heart, and a more accurate view of what is actually at stake.
Second, your people experience a different kind of leadership.
When a leader spirals, everyone around them feels it. Teams pick up on the frantic energy, families absorb the stress. When you choose to slow down - to pray, to breathe, to wait before you act - you are giving the people around you a gift. You are saying with your presence, “We are not abandoned here. We are going to walk through this with wisdom.”
Third, you are reminded who is actually in control.
Panic is often a functional declaration that everything depends on you. If you do not figure it out right now, it is over. Stepping back to pray, to wait, to seek counsel is a quiet way of saying, “I am responsible, but I am not ultimate. God is still God. He was not surprised by this.”
And finally, you become less tossable by circumstances.
Instead of being yanked around by every unexpected email or phone call, you begin to develop a steadier center. Hard things still come. You still feel them. But they do not get to drive the bus.
A grounded way forward
Somewhere in your life right now, there is probably a situation that makes you want to slam the panic button.
A client that might walk.
Numbers that are not where you hoped.
A conversation you are dreading.
A bill that is bigger than you planned for.
You will be tempted to fix it all today. Change everything. Rewrite the plan. Make three big decisions on almost no sleep.
Before you do that, I want to invite you to do something much smaller and much braver.
Slow down.
Pray.
Tell the truth about how hard this feels.
Then give it one night.
If, tomorrow, you still need to make big changes, you will do it with more clarity, more faith, and more peace than you have right now.
And if you practice this long enough, you will start to discover that crises are not always invitations to sprint. Sometimes, they are invitations to trust.
To thriving,
Zach
