The 3-Step Protocol I Use When Life Falls Apart

Tom: I was talking with a business leader in my community the other day, and he told me a story about some recent challenges. Something had happened, and I won't go into the details, but it was the kind of thing you don't see coming. And it wasn't just going to mess up his plans for a week. It was the kind of disruptive change that made him stop and reconsider his whole direction, career, business, and life. And he asked me the question I think a lot of us ask in that moment: what do I do now? That conversation is the reason I'm doing this episode. I'm gonna walk you through the exact three-step protocol I use when life falls apart. Welcome back to the Lead With More podcast, where we help you lead with clarity, intentionality, and confidence. Before I get to the three steps, I want to draw a line because if I don't, this episode is going to sound like bad advice for half of you. And this is not meant to replace counseling. Sometimes you need that kind of professional help, especially if it affects your health. I can't provide that. I'm talking about an unexpected change in your work or life. So let me frame that up for you. I consider two totally different categories of sudden change that often get lumped together and they need completely different responses. The first is tactical. The client just walked or the server's down, someone on your team just quit in the middle of a launch. That kind of "sudden" needs a fast decision. You don't have the luxury of stepping away. You decide, you act, and you adjust as you go. That's not what this episode is about. The second kind is different. It's not asking you to make a call in the next 10 minutes. It's the kind of change that reshuffles your whole direction. A personal event, a layoff, a business model that just stopped working, maybe a conversation that changes what your next 10 years look like. That's identity-level disruption. And the instinct most of us have, the instinct I used to have, is to treat it like the first kind, move fast. Do something, make a decision, start taking action. Anything. Regain control. That instinct doesn't really work. And I want to tell you what I do instead. So step one is solitude. I get alone. Now I need to be specific here because "get alone" gets thrown around as advice all the time. And most of the time it's watered down to the point of being useless. People say take 10 minutes, sit in your car, breathe. That's Fine for a rough afternoon. It does nothing for the kind of change I'm talking about. So here's my actual standard. A half day is the floor. That's the bare minimum. My real practice, what it actually takes for me to get quiet enough to hear myself think is a full day at least. If I can get it, I'll go for a week off. But a full day away from the daily items, personal and business, both of them. Not checking email in the background, not half stepping away, away. I know what some of you are thinking. I don't have a spare day. Fair enough. But this isn't a weekly habit. This is reserved for the moments that are identity level disruptions. And by definition, those don't happen often enough to be a scheduling problem. If your life is handing you one of those moments right now, it's earned its day. Find the solution is worth taking the time. Step two is once I'm actually alone. And actually quiet, I go back to my foundations. I look at that in three parts. First, identity and values. Who am I? What do I actually value? What's non-negotiable for me, regardless of what just happened? I remind myself of that before I do anything else because sudden change has a way of making you question things that don't actually need to be questioned. I've talked about values in the at least two previous episodes. Now, second, purpose. What's my overall purpose in life, in business, in whatever I'm doing? Sometimes that shows up as an actual mission or a vision statement I've written down. I go back and read it. I remind myself of why I'm doing any of this in the first place. Most of the time that hasn't changed. And if it has, I reconsider my life focus. But that's a whole nother episode. And third, and this is where it gets practical, I look at my current focus. I've talked about this before on the show, about how I map out my life focus, a 10-year direction that rolls down into five-year and three-year checkpoints, one-year goals, and then all the way down into quarterly and weekly and daily routines. In this step, I pull that out and ask two questions. What's still true after this change, after this big event? And what actually has to change now, later, or not at all, that's the foundation of my personal audit. Identity, purpose, focus. Stability comes from the first two. Adaptability comes from the third. Now, the third step in this whole protocol, and this is the one where I'm most rigid about, I don't leave that place of solitude without at least one next step. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be the whole plan. In fact, most of the time it isn't. Sometimes the next step is just have one conversation. Sometimes it's gather more information I need before I decide anything else. That still counts. What doesn't count is walking out with nothing. I think about a line I've heard Michael Hyatt with Full Focus say a lot. You can't steer a parked car. I constantly remind myself of this. You have to put something in motion. Before you can make adjustments. For me, it's tied to something bigger. I lean heavily on my faith when taking my next steps, even the ones I take with incomplete information. But wherever you draw your strength from, you need to take the next right step. And then from there, take the next one after that. You may not see that next step until you take the first one. So let me make this a little bit less theoretical for a second. Because it's easy to nod along with the three steps and never actually picture what this looks like. So, a while back, I was presented with an opportunity that landed completely outside of my business direction and focus. It was a great opportunity, but it would require me to shift my direction entirely. And it came with a deadline. My first instinct, honestly, was the wrong one. I wanted to settle it that afternoon, send the emails, make the calls, move on. I caught myself doing exactly what I tell you not to do, treating an identity level shift like a tactical fire. So here's what I did instead. It was really a mix of these two types of response I talked about because I did take immediate action, but in this case, it was an immediate response to the email. That was that tactical fire that needed the immediate action. But in that that response, I bought myself a few days, then I stopped. And I went through this process that I'm talking about now. When I actually sat down with my foundations, here's what I found. My values hadn't moved. My purpose hadn't moved. What would need to move was my focus, the near-tor near-term goals I'd set for myself. I realized that pursuing this new opportunity wouldn't change my purpose, but my targets would shift dramatically along with my attention and focus. My business would shift significantly. I left that time of solitude with a next step to help me get clarity on the long-term viability of this business shift. That is something that happened recently, so I'm still in the middle of my steps, but I'm walking out each one, assessing the results, and finding the next step. My point in this is that this potential business shift is a significant and disruptive change. By following this three-step protocol, I'm able to navigate the steps needed to determine where it ultimately lands. That's just one recent example. I have others where I've used this process to navigate career changes and other big things. So it scales for each case use. So let me just mention this. That focus framework I mentioned, the 10-year down-to-daily piece. If you want to go deeper on how I actually build and maintain that, I've done a couple of episodes on it. I'll link them in the show notes. This protocol leans on it heavily, so it's worth having in place before disruption hits, not while you're in the middle. So here's what I want to leave you with. If something has genuinely knocked you off course this week or this month, not a fire that needs putting out today, but something bigger than that, don't reach for a fast decision first. Get alone, give it real time, not just ten minutes. Go back to who you are, what you value, and what's actually still true. And don't leave that space without one step you can take. Sudden change is likely to find all of us eventually. What determines how it goes isn't how fast you react. It's whether you get quiet enough first to know what you're actually reacting to and where you ultimately want to be. If you'd like to talk about this more, reach out. I'd love to share ideas. If this helps, share it with another leader who might benefit. And don't forget to like and subscribe. It really helps the podcast. And until next time, keep leading with more.