04/25/2026
There’s power in the pause.
The other morning, I was driving through McDonald’s on my way to work. It’s a stop I make often on my long commute, so I’ve gotten to know the woman at the window. We talk a few times a week. I even know she loves her Cocoa Puffs in the morning.
This time, I asked her how her day was going.
She smiled, but you could tell it had already been a morning. She said it didn’t start off great because the kitchen manager didn’t show up, and she had to open the restaurant up all by herself. She could have stayed right there in that frustration. Most people would have.
But then she paused.
And she said, “But it’s going to be a good day… because I choose that, and I will make it happen.”
That moment stayed with me the rest of the drive.
Because that’s it right there. That’s the power of the pause. She had every reason to react to how her day started. To carry that stress forward. To let it shape every interaction after that. But instead, she created a space between what happened to her and how she chose to respond.
And in that space, she took control.
As leaders, we face those moments all day long. Things don’t go as planned. People don’t show up. Situations test us. And our first instinct is often to react.
But the pause gives us something different.
It gives us the chance to choose.
Choose our attitude.
Choose our words.
Choose how we show up next.
Because it really is all in the attitude.
And sometimes the most powerful thing you can do isn’t reacting to how the day starts… It’s deciding how it’s going to go.
