🔥 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.
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✨ A Dose of Inspiration
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
— Anaïs Nin
Leadership and life both ask us to move with courage… especially when so much is outside our control.
The word courage traces back to the Latin cor, meaning heart. And heart is what’s required to build a meaningful life and lead with purpose.
Comfort is tempting. Perfection is persuasive. Certainty is addictive.
But courage asks us to act anyway.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
I first discovered Oliver Burkeman through Four Thousand Weeks, where he shares his own journey from productivity guru to someone finally willing to admit: we’ll never be able to do it all. And the good life isn’t found in managing everything. It’s found in spending our limited time on what matters.
In Meditations for Mortals, his “Kayaks and Superyachts” chapter hits achievers and perfectionists (hi, friends 😉) right where we live. We keep waiting for that future moment when we’ll have the perfect system, be in total control, and glide through life like we’re captains of a luxury superyacht… calm seas guaranteed.
But reality reminds us: we’re each in our own personal kayak.
The waters shift. The winds surprise. We do not control the sea.
So what do we do?
We embrace that truth and find a different kind of ease. There’s a freedom in facing this obvious yet elusive fact.
The mantra I keep returning to is this:
Just steer your kayak over the next few inches of water.
Not to become a shinier, more productive version of ourselves, mastering everything between where we are now and our planned destination.
But because what we’re doing right here, within the next few feet ahead of us, is meaningful for itself.
Here are the reminders that still resonate with me:
- Control is an illusion; attention is power. You choose where to paddle next, not how the tides behave.
- Aim for harmony, not mastery. Stay responsive to what’s real, not what’s ideal.
- Small, steady strokes shape the journey. One good-enough action today creates momentum and informs the next step.
When the sea feels overwhelming, as it often can, the task isn’t to conquer the ocean or even to chart the entire voyage.
It’s simply to steer the kayak you’re in over the next few inches of water.
➡️ Learn more about Oliver and his work here.
🛶 A Dose of Reflection
Burkeman poses one of my favorite grounding questions, a perfect way to steer your kayak today:
“What’s one thing you could do today that would constitute a good-enough use of your finite time, and that you’d actually be willing to do?”
(Don’t get distracted wondering what the “best” thing is. That’s superyacht thinking. 🚫🛥️)
The only way to move forward is to do one thing, no matter how small, right where you already are.
In thinking about your overwhelming ocean, narrow in and ask…
👉 What’s my one good-enough thing today?
👉 What’s the next few inches of water I’m willing to navigate with purpose and presence?
Steer your kayak.
That’s leadership… and that’s life.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: Follow one ball. Trust me. 👀🤯
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