🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
Activating Your Genius in 5,4,3,2,1… 🤩
🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
When we come up against the inevitable feelings or forces of opposition, it’s human nature to retreat to the comfortable. Along our path to greatness are easy off ramps and parking spots, each labeled with an excuse: “we’ve never done it that way before,” “maybe I’ll get to that next week,” or “what if someone doesn’t like what I’m doing?”
These are tempting. They’re also lies. The truth is that when we set off to create and lead something special, something worth putting out into the world, work that makes life better for others, we will meet Resistance. And that’s a good thing. It’s telling us that we’re on the right, not the easy, path.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
Yesterday I asked what problem you’ve been circling… the one that might be more solvable than it feels.
Here’s why. Seth Godin just released a new book, The Knot, and it’s built around a simple, freeing idea: some problems can’t be fixed, some can, and a lot of our stuck comes from not being able to tell the difference.
I’d been hanging on to one of my favorite Seth Godin interviews, his conversation on The Mel Robbins Podcast. (Mel wrote the foreword to The Knot, by the way.) Three ideas from that conversation make the perfect on-ramp.
1️⃣ Is it a situation or a problem?
Seth draws a clear line. A situation is something you can’t change… the rain on your vacation, the laws of physics, a client who simply doesn’t want what you’re offering. A problem has a solution. You might not like the solution and what it might cost you, but it exists.
That distinction is surprisingly freeing. If it’s a situation, you’re off the hook… the work is to accept it. If it’s a problem, you’re on the hook. And if we’re honest, we usually already know the solution. It’s the 15-minute conversation we’ve been avoiding, the next step we haven’t taken, the decision we keep postponing.
Still feeling stuck? Try Seth’s test. Ask yourself: Is there anything I could do to make this worse? The answer is almost always yes. But the good news? If you can make it worse, you have the agency to make it better.
2️⃣ Swap “but” for “and.”
Listen to how we talk about what’s stuck. “I want to lead this change, but my team is not ready.” That one little word turns a fact into an excuse.
Now try: “I want to lead this change, and my team is not ready.” Both things are still true. The difference? “And” keeps you in the driver’s seat. It opens the door to a possibility-fueled question… so now what?
3️⃣ Let resistance be your compass.
This is the idea from Seth’s work that has shaped my own leadership most.
Many years ago, I read Purple Cow, and it hit me at my core enough that “Be remarkable” has become a leadership mantra of mine. What can I help create that someone not only wants to remark on, but is better for having remarked on? That’s a gut-check, and it’s one I come back to time and time again.
And here’s the thing… being remarkable will certainly create resistance. It can come in an external form (the forces of mediocrity will always align to pull down the remarkable) or it can be internal.
Internal resistance is anything we do to get in our own way… procrastinating, over-polishing, waiting until we feel ready. Seth goes so far as to say that if you feel no resistance at all, the work might not be important enough.
So when resistance shows up, he suggests thanking it for the signal. It becomes a compass 🧭 pointing you straight to the work worth doing.
That’s why getting unstuck matters. The knots we avoid are often wrapped around our most important work.
Untangling the knot
In The Knot, Seth goes deeper. He names the kinds of entanglements that keep us stuck (time, social, and identity) and offers a first step that will sound familiar: name it.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here: Simple Steps for Getting Unstuck: Do THIS and Change Your Life
📖 Go deeper: The Knot is available now.
💜 A Dose of Action
Seth’s parting advice in the interview was simple: talk about it, and find someone to talk about it with. Getting unstuck is easier when we’re not doing it alone.
Here are a few ways to try it this week:
🪢 Name it. What’s the knot you’ve been circling? Try writing it in a single sentence.
🗑️ Sort it. Is it a situation to accept or a problem to solve? If it’s a problem, try saying it with “and” instead of “but”… then ask, so now what?
🤲 Untangle it together. Seth created a free tool, theknot.chat, that walks you through the questions from the book. I’ve tried it both on my own and with someone else, and it’s simple but surprisingly insightful. I keep thinking of new ways to use it… a coaching conversation, a team that feels stalled, a decision you’ve been putting off. Nifty AND free? Yes, please.
Grab a colleague, a friend, or your team, and give it a try. You might be surprised how quickly the knot starts to loosen.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: The Bangles having me walk like an Egyptian seems to be working well… 𓀟🎵😂
Send them this link to join The 5-Minute Mentor.