Welcome to The New Mind Studio — your weekly space to connect, reflect, and grow.
Most of us were never taught what to do with our emotions in high-stakes moments. We just react, and clean it up later. This week, I'm sharing the method that changed how I lead myself when it matters most.
Ready? Let's go.
CONNECT
There was a phase when I took everything personally.
A mistake became proof I wasn't good enough.
A plan that didn't work felt like an insult from reality.
I was very good at building those narratives, and once I was inside one, I couldn't separate what was actually happening from what I was telling myself was happening.
So I would react. Quietly on the outside. Loudly on the inside.
I would put myself down. Doubt myself. Lose perspective fast. And with that, lose access to clarity.
What I didn't understand then was simple: the problem wasn't what I was feeling. The problem was that I had no distance from it. No gap between the emotion and the reaction.
Here's why that matters now more than ever.
In a slower world, you could sometimes get away with reacting from emotion and calling it instinct. In the age of AI, that becomes much harder to sustain. When everything speeds up, your inner leadership gets exposed faster too.
AI can give you angles. It can accelerate decisions.
But it cannot reflect for you. That still has to come from you.
And reflection starts with distance, enough space between what you feel and what you do next to actually choose well.
That is what led me to a simple method called illeism, something I rediscovered recently in Nir Eyal's book Beyond Belief.
REFLECT
Illeism sounds more complicated than it is.
It simply means speaking to yourself in the third person.
Instead of asking: Why am I reacting like this?
You ask:
Why is Nadia reacting like this?
What is she feeling?
What narrative is she constructing around this?
That small shift creates something powerful: distance.
You become the investigator, not the subject.
From that position, you can ask much better questions:
What is [your name] feeling right now, and what is that feeling actually pointing to?
What part of this is fact, and what part is interpretation?
What is [your name] afraid this means?
Is this reaction protecting the mission, or protecting identity?
What would [your name] advise another leader to do here?
What I love about this method is how usable it is.
You don't need perfect conditions. You don't need a therapist or a journal or a quiet room. You just need a pause, and the willingness to step outside yourself for a moment.
Try it once this week. One charged moment, one small step back. See what you notice.
GROW
You'll laugh, but I have this pinned above my desk:
I observe myself in real time.
I pause before reacting.
I step back before deciding.
It sounds simple. But in the middle of pressure, simple is exactly what you need.
The leaders who will stand out in the age of AI are not the ones who feel less.
They are the ones who feel it fully, and still CHOOSE what to do next. The ones who can name what they feel without being owned by it. Who can turn emotion into information, and information into judgment.
Speed matters. But clarity matters more.
And that clarity starts with learning to see yourself clearly.
Nadia
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