I sent off my manuscript to the publisher last Friday for my book on intentional decision making which will be published next spring.

I’m thinking about aftermaths, right after a thing is completed. A book. A birth. A pitch. It’s often a time when I get sick, when my body says, ok, we’ve hung on this long without rest, but it stops here. Now you will rest. We will make you rest. Bring on the phlegm.

You’d think from reading LinkedIn and other resolutely positive self-helpish business texts, that we all should be leaping from peak to peak. No slow starts, sticky middles, sloughs of despond. But that’s not how real life works – not for me, my friends, or the executives that I coach.

Oscillation is the reality. And if we can’t praise it, let’s at least acknowledge it. The goal is not to avoid the waves, it is to surf more adroitly. And we can’t learn to surf if we pretend the waves aren’t there, or stick to paddle boarding on flat lakes, hemmed in by shores.

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