Find a rock moment.

I was watching “Everything Everywhere All At Once” on a plane a couple of weeks ago (no spoilers, don’t worry) and had a strange sensation during an extended scene with two rocks overlooking a beautiful vista, communicating via captions. The only sound was the wind whistling over miles and miles of rocks. My sensation? I was jealous of the rocks.

Over and over, I’ve heard about how entrepreneurs have this annoying habit of always wanting to fix problems - which makes sense, because it turns out there are always an infinite number of problems to solve in our own businesses. Some problems can be solved with an email, some with a deep breath, some with a calculator. Some keep us up at night. Some break our spirits and leave us wondering who even gave us permission to start a business at all.

Solving problems can be exhilarating - but it can also be exhausting beyond belief. And noticing the problem without solving it is somehow even worse.

Next time you’re faced with a problem of any size and you feel that anxiety creep up and consider hiding under a rock and waiting for your problem to go away - try borrowing some rock energy instead. “What would a rock do in this moment?” A rock would do nothing. A rock would just be a rock. Taking moments away from our problems can be a great, much-needed reset and give you space to think more clearly, to process what may be getting in the way of a solution, and to put the issue in perspective. Give yourself the opportunity to be a human being for a little bit instead of a human do-ing. Take time to process discomfort and get to the root issue of the situation. Be patient and kind with yourself.

Then - pick things back up, shake off your rock moment, and move with confidence and clarity.

Here’s the thing - as we grow our companies and add staff, our jobs shift from being task-based to being strategy-based. And for those of us who were grinding hard for quite a while, we may have started to associate a lot of self-worth and value in our ability to do our tasks. It may even stop us from adding staff, or letting our employees take over pieces of our work. We have all kinds of reasons…no one can do it as well as we can. The tasks are too hard. People won’t like our business as much without us doing these specific pieces of the process.

Thinking is as valuable as executing - especially when you have the team in place to execute for you. The decisions you will need to make in your business become bigger and more impactful, with longer-term results.

With that in mind - give yourself a few spare moments to be a rock. To be still. To be dormant. Give yourself space and time to incubate a new idea, or to ruminate on something that’s been evading you. You aren’t being a coward, or a lazy person in those moments - you’ve giving yourself space to be a leader, a problem-solver, and an innovator.