Hello Reader,

Welcome to the conversation.

On March 24th, I had the privilege of speaking to nearly 300 women (and some men) at the Women in Food Service Forum. The topic was emotional intelligence. But before I ever said a word, the questions that came in told me everything I needed to know about the room.

What if I'm already depleted? What if management doesn't support me? What if I'm dealing with a health issue and I don't even know how to bring it to leadership?

These weren't abstract questions. These were people telling the truth about their lives. And I want to honor that truth here, because this newsletter series exists because of moments exactly like that one.

“ Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. — Viktor Frankl

From My Chair to Yours

I'll be honest with you. I didn't show up to that stage as someone who has this all figured out.

I showed up as someone who just crawled out of the bottom of her own loop.

Over the past season, I've been sitting in what I can only describe as deflation, a business disappointment that knocked the wind out of me and sent me into a quiet, necessary period of reflection. And if I'm being fully transparent, this isn't my first time here. I've left perfectly good jobs over the years, jobs that looked fine from the outside, because something on the inside was screaming that I was running on empty. That pattern, those moments of walking away, of bottoming out and rebuilding, is actually the reason this framework exists.

The WFF talk didn't just give me a stage. It gave me a way out of my own deflation. Sometimes the medicine you offer others is the medicine you need most.

So when I talk about going from depleted to empowered to fulfillment and the Depletion Loop (depletion-resolve-deflation), I'm not speaking from a mountain top. I'm speaking from the path.

The Lens

Let's talk about where you actually are. Not where you wish you were. Not where you think you should be by now. Where you are.

You can only start where you are.

Depletion doesn't arrive all at once. It builds slowly: one skipped boundary, one swallowed frustration, one night of bad sleep after another. Which means you're not going to get out of it overnight either. And that's okay. The starting point is the starting point. There's no shame in it.

Depletion is not a character flaw.

Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. That spike of anxiety, that flood of cortisol, that heart-pounding response to a difficult conversation. That is ancient, intelligent wiring trying to keep you alive. The challenge is that it cannot tell the difference between a genuine threat and a manager who speaks to you sideways. So before you judge yourself for how you react under pressure, know that reaction is not weakness. It is biology. It is human.

Noticing is the first act of power.

Viktor Frankl wrote that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our freedom. But you cannot find the space if you don't first notice you're in the stimulus. The work begins not with fixing or pushing through but rather it begins with noticing. Why am I feeling this? Where do I feel it in my body? That moment of honest self-observation is the beginning of moving from reaction to choice. It is the door.

Reflection

This week, I'm not asking you to fix anything. I'm asking you to notice.

The next time you feel that familiar pull of depletion (the exhaustion, the irritability, the shutdown, whatever yours looks like for you) pause for just a moment before you push through it. Ask yourself: What triggered this? Where am I feeling it, perhaps in my chest, my shoulders, my jaw? What story am I telling myself right now?

You don't have to answer perfectly. You don't have to do anything with what you find. Just notice.

That pause? That's where your power lives. And it's already in you.

Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day.

-Joanna

Joanna Douglas
Conscious Leadership Coach, Speaker, Teacher Founder of Enneagram Ensight

P.S. I’ve been having more 1:1 conversations with people navigating the messy middle, and I’m opening a few private sessions for those who want support moving through this season. If that’s you, you can reply and we’ll talk.