I can’t think of a single skill more important right now than the ability to self-regulate.

If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety, stress, or depression, you know the feeling:
Wishing you could flip a switch and turn off the heaviness that seems to have power over you.

Your mind races.
Your body feels tight.
No matter how many times you try to ignore it or “push through,” the cycle doesn’t dissipate.

Or maybe this is familiar:

• You get into a heated confrontation and, in the moment, you can’t find the words.
• You’re facing a problem that needs a fresh solution, but no matter how long you “work on it,” you can’t see a way through.

This is where self-regulation becomes a superpower.

I teach entire teams how to self-regulate, and the results are always the same:
More growth. Better decisions. Less drama. Higher performance.

Right now, I’m en route to New York City to support sixty high-level executives in a large organization to do exactly this—create separation between themselves and their emotions.

When the stakes are high, these leaders don’t have the luxury of waiting it out.
They need to act fast, with access to all the parts of the brain that usually go offline under stress.

Here’s what I teach them—and what I want to share with you today:

1. The cost of not learning this skill
   When you’re in a heightened emotional state, your access to logic, reason, creativity, intuition, and big-picture thinking is dramatically reduced.
   This is why so many people spiral in stressful situations: they’re trying to solve problems with only a fraction of their brain online.
2. You are not your emotions
   Emotions are not who you are. They are signals.
   They’re your body’s chemical response to what you’re thinking and perceiving—indicator lights, not identity.
   When you believe “I am anxious” or “I am angry,” you fuse with the feeling and lose your power to choose.
3. The power of pause
   When you pause and create space—before reacting, before sending the text, before walking into the meeting—you disconnect from the emotional surge just enough for your brain to come back into coherence.
   In that space, logic and reason come back online.
   Your options expand. You can respond instead of react.

Today, at some point, you will be emotionally challenged.
That’s not a flaw in you—that’s part of being human.

When it happens, try this:

Stop.
Pause.
Breathe slowly, in and out, a few times.

Then ask yourself:

“What could I do about this now that I haven’t done or thought before?”

That question moves you out of the loop of the past and into the possibility of something new.