Anchor Your Decisions in What You’re Trying to Create
Why letting stress drive our behavior tends to keep us stuck
Most of us are far more problem-oriented than we realize.
It’s second nature to focus on what isn’t working—what we don’t want, what we want to get away from, what’s frustrating us. And when we’re oriented this way for long enough, it creates a steady undercurrent of stress, anxiety, or irritation.
That stress doesn’t just live in our heads. Our bodies want it gone.
So when we’re in problem mode, our reactions are usually less about solving the problem and more about relieving the discomfort. We become reactive. We default to whatever version of fight, flight, or freeze is most natural for us.
Here’s a concrete example.
Let’s say there’s someone on your team who isn’t performing at the level you expect. You notice everything they’re not doing. They’re not listening. They’re not improving. They’re not carrying their weight. And the more you focus on that, the more stressed you feel.
From there, different people react differently:
Some avoid the issue entirely and just take on the extra work themselves.
Some get short, passive-aggressive, or visibly annoyed.
Some complain to their closest work confidant.
Others confront the person in a way that’s more reactive than productive.
These reactions are the fastest way your nervous system knows how to relieve or avoid the stress.
What’s most important to notice is this: while these behaviors may reduce discomfort in the short term, they often move us further away from what we actually want.
In the example above, if you pause and ask a different question—What do I actually want here?—the answer is usually something like:
I want to trust this person to follow through.
I want a working relationship where the workload feels fair.
I want us to be effective together.
Now look at the reactive response of “I’ll just do it myself.”
It may be the quickest way to make the immediate problem go away, but it doesn’t get you closer to trust, fairness, or an effective working relationship. Over time, it actually creates resentment, reinforces the same dynamic, and guarantees you’ll be dealing with the same stress again.
This is where anchoring your decisions in what you want to create changes everything.
When you orient around the outcome you want—rather than the problem you want to escape—you start making different choices. Choices that often require holding more tension in the short term, but lead somewhere better in the long term.
If what you want is a fair workload and a stronger working relationship, the next step might be:
Offering clear feedback
Having a candid conversation about impact
Identifying learning gaps and creating a plan to close them
None of those are quick fixes. They don’t instantly remove the discomfort. But they move you closer to the outcome you actually care about—and prevent the same issue from resurfacing over and over again.
This pattern shows up everywhere. We react to stress in ways that help us cope, but quietly sabotage the thing we want most.
Putting this into practice
Think about a recurring stress or complaint in your life right now.
How do you typically react to it?
Do you default to a fight, flight, or freeze response to cope with the discomfort?
If you painted a clear, affirmative picture of what you actually want in that situation—big picture, ideal scenario—what would it be?
And how might anchoring your actions in that outcome change how you show up?
I wanted to cover this dynamic in today’s Substack because it was a tool I personally relied on this week. I caught myself stuck in a problem-oriented loop for over a week—frustrated with how someone was showing up, low on empathy, spinning my wheels.
When I finally paused and asked myself a more honest question—not How do I want this person to change? but How do I want to be? What actually matters to me here? What do I want to create? —everything shifted.
My initial frustration was a good data point. It was pointing me toward what I value. But once I re-anchored in what I wanted to create, the situation stopped feeling like a burden and started feeling like an opportunity.
I could show up with more clarity, more empathy, and far more alignment with who I want to be—without carrying unnecessary stress.
We never outgrow these tools.
We’re human. We will get frustrated. We will slip into problem mode. The work is noticing when it’s happening—and learning how to flip the script.
This time it took me a week. Sometimes I’m caught in the problem mode for months before I recognize what’s happening. Often, it’s only a few minutes.
Remember, all of this is a practice. But each time I apply the tool, I feel lighter and more fully myself.
When we anchor our decisions in what we want to create, life doesn’t just get easier. It gets more energizing.
