Journey with Della

I felt the pressure in my body to go faster. Muscles twerked and twitched in places I hadn’t been aware of till then. Yet I knew that I wasn’t allowed more than just brisk walking on my morning runs until my strained muscle recovered. My physical therapist big brother had called it bursitis – an inflammation that occurs around the knee area as a result of over exertion – before proceeding to recommend that I slow down until it healed.

Now, all other muscles in my body which had gotten used to being overstretched during my workouts were complaining. And while I was still wrestling with these thoughts and trying to summon all the will power I needed to make the healthy choice, my exercise app announced the 15 minute mark. Immediately I looked around and felt disappointed at the little distance I had covered in 15 minutes. You would have been very far by now, I heard my mind tell me. Almost immediately, a million reasons why I should resume my old routine screamed in my head just as I initiated the bend unto a downward slope. Now, even the trail was asking me to disregard the discomfort around my knee and just run. I felt the speed increasing but determined to let reason win.

All at once, I felt my body sag in frustration. It felt as if I was suddenly trying to haul around a 100kg self and I had to be intentional about keeping the brisk walk beat that was playing through my earbuds. For a split second I felt proud of my small accomplishment. It had taken all the resolve I could summon but I had made the right choice. I had conquered myself and my desire for accomplishment by stopping the rest of my body from undermining the health of my left knee.

In the moment it felt as if I was wasting an entire workout but I knew that I would have all the time to push myself harder AFTER my knee was well again, and not before.

Then it hit me – in a world where so much hangs on what people CAN DO, we must each wake up to the realization that leadership capacity is determined as much what we don’t do as it is by what we actually do. The inability to exercise restraint is at the heart of some of the biggest leadership blunders this world has ever seen.

What do you need to stop yourself from doing today?