Latest / Women Who Lead: Leadership, Career & Influence / The Quiet Power of Monday Morning Rituals | Women Who Lead
Transcript
- You know that exact second when the coffee hits your tongue and the rest of the world hasn’t started screaming yet? That is where your career lives. I want you to picture it. It’s 6:45 AM on a Tuesday, or maybe just a regular Monday. The house is still holding its breath. There’s no one asking for anything. No Slack notification is buzzing against the nightstand. You are standing in your kitchen, or maybe on your porch if you’re feeling fancy, and you have this small, sacred block of time that belongs entirely to you. Most women I coach rush through this part. They treat these first thirty minutes like a checklist item—drink water, check email, mentally rehearse the apology tour they’re going to give their team today. But I’m here to tell you that rushing through the mundane is exactly how we lose our edge. We think clarity comes from big strategy sessions and quarterly reviews. It doesn’t. Clarity comes from the quiet repetition of things that ground us before the chaos begins. Let’s get real for a second about what we’re actually doing in those early hours. Are you preparing to lead, or are you just preparing to survive? Think about the noise that starts creeping in around seven-thirty. The emails pile up. The calendar blocks turn red. Suddenly, you are reacting instead of acting. You are answering to urgency rather than importance. And by the time you sit down at your desk, or log into Zoom, you are already three steps behind. You’ve handed over your mental sovereignty to other people’s priorities. This isn’t a failure of time management; it’s a failure of boundary setting with yourself. When you skip the ritual, you skip the transition from human being to leader. You bring the exhaustion of the night before into the boardroom. You bring the anxiety of the inbox into the negotiation. But when you honor the mundane—the making of the tea, the walking of the dog, the sitting in silence—you create a buffer zone. You allow your nervous system to settle so that when the first demand comes, you can meet it from a place of choice, not reflex. That shift is everything. I remember when I was still deep in the Fortune 500 trenches, I thought rituals were for people who didn’t have enough work to do. I’d drink my coffee standing up, scrolling through news feeds, trying to absorb every crisis before nine o’clock. I was proud of my efficiency. I was also burning out faster than anyone on my team. One morning, I showed up late to a critical strategy meeting because I couldn’t find my keys, and I realized I hadn’t actually looked at my keys in days. I was living in a state of perpetual panic. So I made a rule. I had to sit. Just sit. For ten minutes. No phone. No laptop. Just me and the steam rising off my mug. At first, it felt useless. I felt guilty. I thought I should be solving problems. But what I found was that the problems didn’t disappear. They just stopped looking like monsters. They became manageable tasks. By slowing down the start, I sped up the execution. The mundane became my strategic advantage. It wasn’t about wasting time; it was about calibrating the instrument before playing the song. I know what some of you are thinking. 'Deborah, I have kids. I have a mortgage. I have a partner who thinks chores are optional.' I hear you. I am not suggesting you need an hour of meditation or a personal trainer in your foyer. That’s not accessible to everyone, and frankly, it’s not necessary. The ritual doesn’t have to be grand. It has to be consistent. It can be brewing the coffee by hand while listening to one specific song. It can be watering the plants and noticing which leaves are drooping. It can be five minutes of stretching on the rug while the kettle boils. The point is not the activity; the point is the attention. When you pay attention to the small things, you remind yourself that you are present. And when you are present, you don’t carry the fatigue of yesterday into today. You leave it there. You wash your hands of it metaphorically, and then you walk into your day with clean hands. You show up as yourself, not as a collection of stress responses. That matters to your team. They can feel when you are running on fumes versus when you are fueled by intention. We talked recently about the heavy emotional weight after making hard personnel decisions. How guilt can creep in, whispering that you weren’t strong enough, or kind enough. That kind of silence lingers. It sits in the back of your mind during your morning routine. If you rush through that coffee time, you let the guilt take the wheel. You might find yourself checking emails to see if anyone is talking about you, or worrying about how the team will react to the memo you sent last night. But if you stay in that quiet space, you can acknowledge the feeling without letting it dictate your actions. You can say, 'Okay, I did what I had to do. Now, what is the next right step?' The ritual gives you the space to separate your worth from your workload. It reminds you that you are a person first, and a leader second. And ironically, that is what makes you a better leader. Because you aren’t leading from fear. You’re leading from clarity. So how do you build this? You don’t overhaul your life overnight. You start small. Pick one thing. Just one. And protect it like it’s a meeting with the CEO. Because it is. It’s a meeting with the most important stakeholder in your organization: you. If you wouldn’t cancel a call with a major client, don’t cancel this moment with yourself. Guard it fiercely. If your partner interrupts, gently redirect. If your phone buzzes, flip it face down. Create a physical signal that says, 'This is mine.' Over time, this becomes non-negotiable. It becomes the anchor that keeps you steady when the storms roll in. And when you slip up—and you will, because you’re human—don’t beat yourself up. Just come back to it the next morning. Consistency beats intensity every single time. You don’t have to do it all at once. You just have to show up for the small stuff. Because the small stuff is where the big changes happen. It’s in the mundane that we find our power. By the time you sit down at your desk, or open your laptop, you should feel a sense of readiness. Not excitement—that’s too much pressure—but readiness. A quiet confidence that you have claimed the day before it claims you. You know what matters. You know where your energy goes. You are not reactive. You are intentional. And that difference is palpable to everyone around you. Your team sees it. Your peers notice it. Even your competitors can sense it. Because you are operating from a place of centered authority, not frantic scrambling. This is how you sustain success. Not by grinding yourself into dust, but by protecting the spaces that keep you whole. So tomorrow morning, before the world wakes up, wake up yourself. Sit with your coffee. Look out the window. Breathe. Claim that silence. It’s yours. And it’s the most powerful tool you have. Keep showing up. Keep choosing the quiet moments. I’ll see you in the next one. Take care of yourself out there.