The Week That Wasn't

On worry, the German word that means to strangle, and what your time actually looked like last week.

I want to tell you about a conversation I have with loan officers more often than you might think.

They come to me convinced they've lost a week. A deal went sideways — something complicated, something stressful, something that genuinely required their attention. And by Friday they're exhausted, behind on their sales activities, and certain that the problem consumed everything.

So we sit down and we start chunking it down together. Actually accounting for the time.

How long did it take to make the initial calls to find out what happened? Fifteen minutes. How long to loop in the relevant parties? Another twenty. How long to do their part of the resolution? Maybe an hour, spread across two days, waiting on others in between.

And the rest of the week?

Worrying about it.

Replaying the scenario. Talking about it. Catastrophizing about what it might mean. Mentally rehearsing conversations that never happened. Checking email every twenty minutes for an update that wasn't coming yet because someone else needed to act first.

The problem didn't take the week. The worry did.

And when I share this observation — gently, carefully — the reaction is almost never defensiveness. It's genuine surprise. A long pause. Because they weren't aware it was happening. The worry had been so consuming, so mentally exhausting, that their brain registered it as work. They weren't convincing themselves of something they knew wasn't true. They had genuinely, completely convinced themselves — at a level below conscious awareness — that the problem had taken the week. 

That's how powerful worry is. It doesn't just steal your time. It makes you believe it was supposed to. 

And if you're being honest with yourself right now — you've had that week too.

Sound familiar?

If you just felt a little uncomfortable reading that — good. That means it landed where it was supposed to.

If something in here is already sitting with you — I'd love that conversation. Simply send me a message.

What worry actually is

I want to share something with you that stopped me cold when I read it. And I mean stopped me — put the book down, stared at the ceiling, thought about every LO I've ever coached kind of stopped.

It starts with two words. Two ancient words, to be exact.

The German word for worry means to strangle. 

The Greek word for worry means to divide the mind.

Let that settle for a second.

You've been out here thinking you were managing a difficult transaction. Turns out you were self-imposing a chokehold while simultaneously trying to think your way through it with a brain that was operating in two places at once. No wonder you're exhausted by Thursday.

And then Max Lucado — in a daily devotional of all places — pulled both of those together into one sentence that I haven't been able to shake since:

Worry is a noose on the neck and a distraction of the mind.

A noose. A distraction.

Not a strategy. Not a solution. Not a productive use of a single Tuesday afternoon.

Worry doesn't work. It just feels like working — because your mind is fully occupied, your body is carrying the weight of it, and by the end of the day you are genuinely tired from something that moved nothing forward. Not one inch.

A few questions worth asking yourself right now

Before I give you the recipe — because there is one — I want you to sit with a few honest questions.

Think about the last time a deal went into crisis mode. How much of your time was spent actually doing something to move it toward resolution? And how much was spent in the mental loop of it — the replaying, the retelling, the low-grade dread that followed you into every other conversation that week?

How many of your sales activities didn't happen that week — not because you didn't have time, but because the worry took up the space where the energy for them usually lives?

And here's the one that tends to land hardest: how much of what you were worried about was actually within your control — and how much were you waiting on someone else to act before you could do anything at all?

The recipe

I want to begin by saying — this is much easier to say than to do. This is still a work in progress for me. But these are the things that have helped, and I share them because they might help you too.

Every deal that goes into crisis will create an emotional response. That's human. What matters is what you do in the moments after.

Pause and breathe. Not as a platitude — as an actual physiological reset. A few slow, deliberate breaths shift your nervous system and bring your attention back to the present moment.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What — if anything — can I do right now to move this toward resolution?
• Is there something within my control? And if so, what is it specifically?
• Does that need to happen now — or later? If later, when exactly?
• Do I need my manager, a colleague, or a resource I haven't tapped yet?

Take action on whatever the answer is. Then let it go and return to your plan for the day.

Worrying about it — or talking about it just for the sake of talking — will not change a single thing. It is energy spent entirely on what is not within your control. And that is a cost you cannot afford.

Remember the donut

I started using this analogy years ago and it has stayed with me ever since — and one of my clients prefers to think of it as a dartboard, which I love equally.

Picture a donut. The hole in the center is the 20% of any situation that is within your control.

The pastry around it — the part most people spend their time in — is the 80% that isn't.

Your job is to stay in the hole. The things you can control.

Not because the outer 80% doesn't matter. It does. But your energy, your focus, your attention — the finite resources we've been talking about all month — belong in the center.

On the action you can take. On the update you can give. On the next right move that is actually yours to make.

The awareness that you've drifted into the outer ring is the moment you get to choose to come back.

The interval approach

One of the most practical things you can do when a deal is in crisis is take control of the communication before it takes control of you.

Instead of waiting for the agent and client to call you every ten minutes — tell them when you'll reach out. 9am. 12pm. 3pm. End of day. Every day until it's resolved. Even if you have nothing new to report — reach out anyway. The update is: we're still on it.

And here's the key: under-promise and over-deliver. If you say you'll call at 9am, call at 8:45. Every time. It reduces everyone's anxiety, it protects your time, and it keeps you in the role you most want to occupy in this transaction — the calm, competent professional who has this handled.

One more thing — and this one matters

Once the crisis has passed and the dust has settled, turn the mirror on yourself.

Not during. During is for action, communication and staying in the hole. But after — when the loan has closed, the tension has released, and you have some distance from it — ask yourself the honest questions.

How did I contribute to this situation? What did I miss? What could I have done differently earlier that might have changed the outcome?

This is still the hole. This is still the 20%. Because taking honest ownership of your role — without self-punishment, without spiraling — is one of the most powerful and intentional things you can do with your energy. It's what keeps the same crisis from happening the same way twice.

The LOs who grow the most aren't the ones who never have problems. They're the ones who refuse to let a problem pass without learning something from it.

Be a solutionist during. Be a student after. Both live in the hole.

The worry was never going to close the loan anyway.