Why every CEO should quit their job — if only for a month — to escape their fear of failure.
By: Mike Buonaiuto
Tags: Self Improvement, Startup, Productivity, Charity Marketing, Leadership

Mike Buonaiuto, Executive Director at Shape History, London’s Social Change Communications Agency, quit his job to regain perspective & ended up exploring why more young business leaders should mind their mental health.

I’ve spent the last few weeks doing something I’ve not done since founding Shape History, a social change communications agency in London. I quit my job and took a break for longer than a single weekend. No emails, no financials — nothing. The result taught me more about the artificial sense of urgency many young business leaders face, and how overcoming this regains true perspective.

I’ve been lucky enough to craft a career for over a decade in an area of work I truly love — including building an agency which works only with good causes and helps others through storytelling. The team are absolute godsends, but when work is what you enjoy — as a business leader when do you know when it’s time for a break?

It had been too long. We’d just been through some considerable team growth, including establishing a firm senior management level at the agency, and we wanted to test how successfully the company could operate with the new processes, independent of myself — for a short time. To scale, a business needs to be somewhat autonomous of its founder, and I was finding it extremely tricky to step away.

With the support of the team, I was persuaded to clock off and travel to the seemingly only place with Winter sunshine in Europe — the Canary Islands. I wanted Bali, but my pre-christmas budget demanded somewhere a little closer! So like something out of Eat Pray Love, I planned a trip of mountain climbing, meditating and audiobooks — all in a bid to use the time to really learn some new things about the world, about myself and where I wanted the agency to go next year.

“There is a huge difference between succeeding through self-discipline & succeeding through artificial urgency.”

All was going well (I hadn’t checked my emails once,) until around 5 days in, when I woke up with a sudden overwhelming feeling of anxiety. It was the first Monday morning I hadn’t spent organising my week as I usually do. My mind went into panic mode, and I couldn’t shift this feeling of guilt because I wasn’t with the team; feeling selfish for taking some extended time off. Like most phobias, it was completely irrational.

That day I had already planned to visit Pico de las Nieves & Roque Nublo, the highest points on the island at 6,500ft above sea level. Once at the top I remember sitting against the awesome panoramic view and just breathing deeply. The air was so clean up there, it was unbelievable. I just sat trying to clear my mind of anxiety, mostly by concentrating on how it felt within my own body.

I was inspired by what I’d heard on Russell Brand’s “Under The Skin” podcast the previous day, during his interview with Ruby Wax discussing the effects of cortisol on the brain. I was particularly curious in how this research could help young business leaders, notorious for overworking, manage their own mental health.

Cortisol is a hormone released in humans when under threat or pressure which forces a lymbic reaction. It was useful in early times when a saber-toothed tiger was coming to eat us. We’d surge our bodies full of the stuff and have the ability to fight or flight. But whilst modern society has evolved to protect us from such dangers, our brains have not. Our minds therefore can have a tendency to flood our bodies with cortisol when other seemingly benign dangers emerge; anything from forgetting to pay bills to messing-up at work. And what’s worse — the brain can create a habit of doing it, if it’s successful in getting you out of “trouble.”

Cortisol causes your body to flood in adrenaline and quicken your heartbeat, and your mind will therefore often fill with curt and critical thoughts at the same time. Wax argues the chemical desperately needs to be controlled, and brought down to regularity using mindfulness and meditation. We need to learn that self-criticism is a natural part of the brain’s bid to keep us alive, but by teaching ourselves to be present in the moment, shifting such thoughts should turn down the critical volume to resemble the radio on in the next room — present but ignored.

It takes work. As Wax says “It’s like a sit up.” Your brain will try to distract you away, but through practice, you can rewire your mind to relax your body more intuitively, which helps then in those moments day to day when you start to fill with cortisol; reacting on panic rather than perspective. I’ve paraphrased her work hugely. Feel free to check it out yourself here and here. (She’s also hilarious.)