Sometimes the Best Decision Is to Pull Over

I was out riding my motorcycle recently with no particular destination in mind and no real purpose other than enjoying the ride when I got caught in the rain. It was not one of those brief summer showers that passes quickly enough to ignore. It was coming down hard enough that it was pelting my face and hands, visibility was getting progressively worse, and I was still a long way from home. What had started as mildly uncomfortable was quickly turning into something I simply needed to endure until I could get somewhere dry.

There was not much around me that offered any real protection, and the instinct was the same one I have had in a lot of situations over the years: put my head down, stay focused, and keep moving. That instinct has served me well plenty of times. In the military, in healthcare, in executive leadership, and in life generally, there are moments when there is no reasonable alternative to continuing forward even when the conditions are miserable. Sometimes the only way through something is, in fact, through it.

Then I remembered a pedestrian overpass farther up the road, and suddenly the problem became smaller. I did not need to solve the entire ride home. I did not need the weather to change immediately. I simply needed to make it to that overpass, and for the next few miles that became the only objective that mattered.

When I finally reached it, that little stretch of concrete felt like a haven. I pulled underneath, got off the bike, and stood there completely soaked while the same rain that had been hitting me a few minutes earlier continued pouring down just a few feet away. Nothing about the storm had changed, but my relationship to it had.

What surprised me most was how peaceful it felt. A few minutes earlier I had been fighting the rain, straining to see, bracing against the weather, and concentrating almost entirely on getting through it. Under the overpass, I had nowhere I needed to be and nothing I needed to do except wait. For once, there was no advantage in pushing harder, no problem to solve, and no reason to prove that I could continue enduring something simply because I had already been enduring it.

So I waited, and after a while the rain began to slow, the clouds started to break, and the sun returned. The road had not changed, my destination had not moved, and I still had the same distance to travel, but the conditions were different and so was I. A few minutes of shelter had not solved anything permanently, but it had made continuing easier, safer, and far more enjoyable.

I thought about that experience later because I suspect many of us are much better at pushing through storms than we are at recognizing when we are allowed to step out of them temporarily. Careers, relationships, finances, family responsibilities, leadership roles, and life itself will occasionally place us in circumstances we did not plan for and cannot immediately control. For people accustomed to carrying responsibility, the instinct is often to lower our head, tighten our grip, and keep moving because movement feels like the responsible thing to do.

Sometimes it is, but not always. There are moments when continuing to push is not evidence of strength so much as evidence that we have forgotten we have options. The fact that we are capable of enduring something does not automatically mean uninterrupted endurance is the wisest response, particularly when a brief pause might allow us to recover enough perspective, energy, or judgment to continue more effectively.

That is a lesson I probably appreciate more now than I would have earlier in life. For many years, I associated resilience almost entirely with persistence. Resilient people kept going, worked through fatigue, absorbed pressure, and found a way to accomplish what needed to be done. There is truth in that definition, but it is incomplete because real resilience also includes knowing when to recover, when to create distance from the problem, and when to stop spending energy fighting conditions that are unlikely to change simply because we are fighting them.

Leaders can be particularly bad at granting themselves that permission. We spend so much time talking about being present for other people, supporting teams, protecting the workforce, and creating conditions where others can succeed that it is easy to treat our own capacity as though it were unlimited. We convince ourselves that because other people depend on us, stepping away even briefly is somehow selfish or irresponsible, when in reality the opposite may be true.

A leader who never recovers eventually becomes a different leader. Patience shortens, judgment becomes less disciplined, frustration appears more quickly, and problems that would normally be manageable begin to feel personal. The leader may still be physically present and still technically performing the role, but the quality of that presence changes because there is less left to give.

That does not mean every difficult season warrants retreat, and it certainly does not mean leadership should become an excuse to avoid pressure. There are storms we have to ride through because the mission requires it, because other people are depending on us, or because no shelter is available. Part of maturity is being able to distinguish those moments from the ones where we are continuing simply because we have become accustomed to equating motion with strength.

There is nothing inherently weak about finding shelter when shelter is available. Taking a knee, stepping out of the fray for a moment, catching your breath, creating some temporary distance, or simply allowing circumstances to settle before deciding what comes next can be an act of judgment rather than avoidance. The goal is not to live permanently under the overpass; the goal is to recognize that stopping long enough to recover may be exactly what allows you to get back on the road and finish the journey well.

I think we spend too much time celebrating leaders who appear endlessly available and not enough time respecting leaders who understand stewardship of their own capacity. Taking care of yourself is not separate from taking care of the people you lead, because the quality of your decisions, your presence, your patience, and your ability to carry responsibility are all affected by whether you are operating from a place of clarity or depletion.

That motorcycle ride reminded me that not every storm has to be fought continuously. Sometimes the storm is simply going to keep raining for a while, and the wisest thing you can do is find a place to stand where it is not hitting you directly, let the worst of it pass, and give yourself enough time to recover before moving again.

Leadership does require perseverance, and there will always be moments when pushing through is exactly the right answer. It also requires enough self-awareness to recognize when persistence has stopped being useful and enough humility to admit that you may need a few minutes under the overpass before continuing.

Leading other people well has always required knowing when to push, when to pause, when to absorb pressure, and when to create space for recovery. The same judgment applies to ourselves, and perhaps one of the more mature forms of leadership is realizing that taking care of your own capacity is not a detour from the mission.

It is part of what allows you to keep carrying it.