Borrow their courage.

The 3AM panic attacks started when payroll tipped over $500k.

In the services industry, revenue is never guaranteed. Even after a contract is signed, there's always the threat of chasing late payments or enlisting legal help to collect what you're owed. These are worst-case scenarios, and though I rarely faced them, my brain had different opinions in the small hours of the morning.

I grew up poor, so carrying this kind of financial responsibility and weight was a constant learning experience. After months of unscheduled wake-up calls—chest pounding, mind racing—I started getting annoyed at myself. This is stupid. I'm waking up in a sweat and for what? Money? I wasn't the first person to take on risk where business failure could mean losing everything. This is not a life or death situation so why is my brain treating it as such? The more I thought about it I got pissed off.

So I started thinking about leaders who had much more on the line. Way more at risk. And I landed on Dwight D. Eisenhower and the tremendous pressure he carried during World War II. His responsibility—and his alone—was to defeat the Nazis and re-establish the western front while minimizing Allied casualties. Millions of lives hung in the balance. The fate of the free world rested on his decisions.

And here I was, chest pounding, sweaty, worried about money. Bullshit!

I started telling myself if Eisenhower could muster the strength and courage for that challenge, there's no reason I can't figure out my relatively small fear. As someone who's coached people to become more than they thought capable, it was time to listen to my own advice.

It took weeks of having that conversation with myself in the quiet dark, but eventually my subconscious started to believe. I was able to believe, and sleep through the night. My payroll commitment eventually grew to seven figures, but through that growth I stayed grounded by re-centering on my totem—Eisenhower's steady resolve under impossible pressure.

Today, every conversation I'm in leads to the same questions of disbelief and statements of frustration. I know you're hearing it too. We're getting through the week shell-shocked and in no mood to see one more mention of “keep calm and carry on.”

We're collectively on the cusp of crippling doubt, if not already there. The kind that robs you of the rest you need to keep fighting. And no amount of news consumption helps. We should stay informed, but much past that tips into preparing for an apocalypse few of us are equipped to meet emotionally or financially.

So I'm reminded of what got me through my 3AM panic attacks: borrowing the courage of someone who faced something harder and made it through.

There are so many stories that we can lean on for strength when our tank feels empty.

Ernest Shackleton spent two years trapped in Antarctic ice, his crew running out of supplies, no rescue in sight. Every choice—from abandoning the ship to steering a lifeboat 800 miles—was his alone, and somehow they all made it home. That's what isolation with impossible responsibility looks like when you refuse to break.

You know that feeling when perfect isn't good enough—when it's the only option? Katherine Johnson lived in that space for months, checking Apollo 11's flight path when computers couldn't be trusted. If she was wrong, there was no backup plan. Her math brought the astronauts back alive. We've all stared at decisions that felt that final.

Then there's the weight of being watched, of knowing one wrong move erases everything—and not just from your LinkedIn profile. Václav Havel carried that for years under Communist surveillance, writing and organizing when a single mistake could have disappeared him. But here's what gets me: when the revolution came, he was ready to lead because he had never stopped preparing. He turned constant scrutiny into readiness.

When you're responsible for preventing a nuclear meltdown—and who isn’t these days—while forces beyond your control push you toward disaster, you understand what Masao Yoshida faced in the weeks after Fukushima. Radiation climbing, orders from above that didn't match reality on the ground—but he kept seawater flowing into those reactors anyway. Sometimes protecting what matters means defying what doesn't make sense.

No one had ever drilled as deep as André Sougarret needed to reach those thirty-three trapped miners in the Chilean desert. Sixty-nine days, no proven plan, lives hanging in the balance. The kind of long shot that makes your stomach turn. But he didn't stop until the last man saw daylight, because that's what you do when retreat isn't an option.

If you've ever felt like you're the only one who believes in your work—really believes—then you understand what Katalin Karikó endured for decades. Told her mRNA research was pointless, losing grants, getting demoted, watching her career get buried while she kept going. Until a pandemic proved her right and her persistence saved millions. Sometimes being ahead means being alone for a very long time.

And if you’re afraid you’re being replaced by the robots or that what you bring no longer matters, think about James Baldwin. He lived in a world determined to reduce him to a stereotype and erase the full complexity of his humanity. Every system told him he was less, but he wrote with such precision and truth that he made himself impossible to ignore—and his voice still shapes the conversation decades later.

Borrow their courage, and make it your own.

I don't know how this will land for you, but when you're feeling the weight of the world, know that you're not alone. People have been dealing with these anxieties for a long time, and we have champions who showed us a way forward. Like you, they were just human. They woke up tired. They doubted themselves. They wanted to quit, but they decided that their fear didn't get to write the ending.

Think about this as you prepare for the day where you might endure a wasteful meeting, sit through a dehumanizing interview, or get that ding reminding you the credit card payment is due. When your body shifts into fight-or-flight mode, take a breath, pick your totem, and borrow their courage.

If they found a way through, so can you. That doesn't mean things won't change—but these stories remind us that you're not the first person to feel like the walls are closing in. And you won't be the last to find a way through.