• The Sweet Spot: Finding Your Optimal Stress Zone

    by Michelle Cummings

    We often talk about stress as a negative. Something to avoid, manage, or eliminate. But not all stress is bad. In fact, some stress is essential. It gives you focus, urgency, and the energy to perform. The problem is not stress itself – it’s how much of it you’re carrying.

    There’s a name for this idea: the Yerkes-Dodson Law. It describes how performance increases with stress up to a certain point – then drops sharply when stress gets too high. On one side of the curve is overload and burnout. On the other is underload: the often-overlooked zone of too little stress. It’s when you feel unmotivated, bored, or disconnected.

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  • The Bounce-Back Factor: Why Resilient Leaders Move Forward Faster

    By Michelle Cummings

    Disappointment. Criticism. Failure. These aren’t glitches in the system of leadership. They’re built into the role. What separates effective leaders isn’t their ability to avoid setbacks, but how quickly they recover from them. The ability to bounce back, to recalibrate and reengage, is one of the clearest signs of emotional resilience and one of the most underrated leadership strengths.

    When a setback hits, it’s tempting to withdraw or internalize the failure. But resilient leaders pause, assess, and move. They reflect without spiraling, and they take ownership without self-punishment. This mindset isn’t just about confidence. It’s about agility. Leaders who recover quickly keep momentum on their side, and teams mirror that pace.

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  • Embracing Change: The Power of Focusing on What Matters

    Whether it’s a change in season, our homes, or our teams, most of us are fascinated by makeovers. I know I spend way too much time watching the HGTV channel myself. From magazines to trainings to television shows, we all drink in reinventions of almost every conceivable thing: rooms, closets, cars, bodies, even relationships. Why? Because aside from a little silliness here and there, makeovers are particularly instructive. They offer a window into the process of transformation, the whys, the hows, and the actions that bring it about. Wanting to do something better… it is an outer expression of an inner desire. 

    On the one hand, change can be fun and anticipatory. As mentioned above, reinventing or refreshing a space can be creative and invigorating, and the change of seasons to Fall welcomes cooler temperatures and the beauty of the changing leaves. On the other hand, change can be really hard. Especially if the change is not something you wanted or anticipated, like the people devastated by Hurricane Helene, the passing of a loved one, or a relationship ending badly. There are also many massive changes going on in the world right now, such as our impending election and unpredictable war-torn areas of the globe.

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