High Performance Leadership Under Chemical Fire: Riding the Chemical Wave

We’ve all had a vision of who we want to be in a moment where it matters.

The kind of moment from which a character is forged, or careers are made or broken, whether it's leading our team through a critical decision, or flying a four-ship through wild weather.

We prepare ourselves to be calm, clear and strong – the kind of operator that is trusted to perform under personal and professional pressure.

And yet many of us have also experienced moments, or even days, when a challenge lies directly across our path, filling our vision, and our feelings sabotage the self we know ourselves capable of being.

Why can something as fleeting and changeable as feelings have the power to derail our carefully cultivated self in an unguarded moment, or in the depths of an intensely challenging week?

As leaders, of self and others, this is the paradox: our competence, experience, and resourcefulness are still there – if anything, they’ve grown constantly, quietly, where we nourish them with our attention. And yet, in a moment of emotional fire, something hijacks our ability to access our skills with confidence.

How do temporary feelings have so much power to influence our life decisions?

Because we are walking, talking, chemical reactions.

It works like this:

Emotions are the chemical outputs of our brain and body. Energy -in-motion.

Feelings are the meanings (the story) we give our emotions.

To break it down:

-  Our brain’s first job is survival — and emotion is the chemical code it uses to grab our attention and push us into action.

-  Our brain’s second role is to make sense of our world, because making sense enables pattern recognition, which in turn allows us to predict safety and risk.

-  As a result, our emotions are given a story, and we experience this as feelings. Feelings are the emotions filtered through our conscious and subconscious experiences of the world.

This week, I’ve been reminded that even the most seasoned high performers are not immune to chemical hijack.

I've been overwhelmed by emotions as multiple challenges have unfolded in my home life and businesses.

I didn’t ask for this.

I don’t deserve this.

I didn’t see this coming.

All justifiable, valid, human feelings.

Chemicals with a story attached.

This week, the chemicals produced in my body have reached toxic levels. I can feel the cortisol and epinephrine squeeze like thieves into the fabric of my daily choices, acting to suppress dopamine* and reducing my thoughts to barely masked versions of fight, flight or freeze. 

So what can we do when we are under chemical fire?

This is where self-leadership matters the most – and why I have a go-to menu of tools that disrupt the chemical surge and put me back in charge of a high-pressure moment.

Check fire – acknowledge the chemical code that is signalling something in the body.

Counter Strike – deploy an alternative narrative. Don’t force it, just suppose it. A good question to pose might be: What am I making this mean? Is this definitely true? Could there be a better story I could tell myself here?

Rally the troops – invest in producing more positive chemicals, like soldiers in your biological army. What can I do today to increase my dopamine? How can I microdose serotonin right now?

Here’s what I did this week.

Check-fire: Wow…my body is really panicking. What is it signalling?

Counter strike - What am I making this mean? Is it real?

Rally the troops—time to switch to a dopamine-boosting, cortisol-lowering routine. I decided to go surfing. The super-cold New Zealand water acts like a shock to the system, the waves give me just enough fear to channel and release adrenaline productively, the physical experience of being in my body produces serotonin, and engaging in a flow-state task produces dopamine.

A simple surf has completely reset my chemical balance.

Ok… I’ll be honest… it was a rough week, I surfed three times. ☺ 

Surfing didn’t erase the challenges I am facing, but it gave me back enough cognitive clarity to choose my next move, rather than letting my chemicals choose for me.

Surfing was the high-performance choice I made for my day, today.

What’s yours?

* Dopamine is the molecule responsible for motivation and reward circuits in our brain. Without dopamine, we do not feel motivated for anything. Chances are, if you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, you have low dopamine.