Taming Positive Mania

Why you need to slow down for the sake of your team.

Positive mania – it’s a term I’ve coined to describe a phenomenon I’ve noticed in myself. It’s that rush of emotion and momentum when things are going well. Oddly enough, it took me a while to recognise it for what it is and start to rein it in. But, as I’ve discovered through conversations with others, it’s not just a quirk of mine. Like almost everything, it happens not to just be me that does it.

When the going is good, I find myself getting into overdrive; I get “on a roll”. Thoughts race and I start firing off instructions, laying out next steps, and pushing forward with a sense of urgency. A friend recently shared with me that behind this behaviour, she feels a twinge of fear – the fear that if she slows down, she might forget something, lose her clarity, or miss out on opportunities – miss the wave.

Well, the impact of this is chaos and overwhelm for those around you. Positive mania can be far from positive for others. Efforts are wasted, and a sense of instability and scatteredness takes hold. People around you might feel left behind and ignored and your priority becomes work-centric and starts to spill over into other areas. Even my nanny expressed a sense of overwhelm to me for what it feels like to be around this!

So, here’s my advice to anyone who resonates with this experience: recognise it for what it is –  reactive behaviour, even if it feels good to you; after all, reactions can be both positive and negative.  

Here are the steps I’ve been taking to rein it in:  

1. Recognise it: Acknowledge when you’re caught up in the rush of positive mania.
2. Take a breath: Deliberately slow down your thoughts and actions.
3. Practice stopping: Learn to pause and assess when to proceed and when to hold back.
4. Take notes: If you’re afraid of forgetting something, jot it down, but then allow yourself to step back.  It doesn’t need immediate action.  
5. Double-check: Develop the discipline to review and revise your work, ensuring accuracy and thoroughness. 
6. Consider your pacing: Give those around you considered and deliberate information in the right time and format for them to receive it.

Think of it like learning to savour progress in small, deliberate bites, rather than gulping it down and feeling sick afterwards. When we rush too fast, we make mistakes, and we overwhelm those around us. As a leader our responsibility is to be stable and reliable for those around us so we can support the overwhelm – not create it as we guide our teams in moving forward together.