Navigating Curveballs
It's a Friday morning, half past seven. I'm barely awake, and my dog is being sick. So I do what you do: I pick him up and head for the bathroom. I never get there. I still don't know exactly what happened. What I know is that the pain arrived before the understanding did. The nail of my big toe, the whole nail, ripped out — flesh with it. Two more toes fractured. Blood everywhere, and a level of pain that requires expletives. Then it gets dangerous. I live with a rare, life-threatening condition, and pain like that doesn't just hurt me; it can kill me. I feel the crisis start to kick in. Consciousness thinning at the edges. Focus going. My heart rate, according to the wearable on my wrist, at 150. The irony is that I had one thing in the diary that morning: record an episode about curveballs — the ones life throws without warning, without permission, and without the slightest interest in your plans. The universe, it seems, insisted on editorial input.
A comforting lie
There's a myth you may have heard, and possibly believed: that the people who stay composed when the hit lands are built differently. Wired calm. Born unshakable. It's a comforting story, because it lets you off the hook. And it's a lie. Fifteen years as a barrister in courtroom crossfire. Three years running a private-equity-backed start-up. Sixteen years coaching high achievers — founders, surgeons, lawyers, traders and people who work at the sharpest end of pressure. I have never once met a person who was born unshakable. Not one. I've met people who trained. The difference matters. If composure is character, you either have it or you don't. If it's training, it's available — to anyone willing to do the work.
Why the curveball hits harder
A curveball is uncertainty at maximum dose: no warning, no map, no timeline. And your nervous system has a specific response to uncertainty. In 2016, neuroscientists at University College London ran an experiment in which participants faced the prospect of electric shocks. Some knew for certain a shock was coming. Others were told there was a fifty-fifty chance. The uncertain group showed more stress than the people who knew for certain they'd be hurt. Think about that. Knowing you will be hurt is easier on your system than not knowing. That's why the curveball hits harder than the scheduled crisis. It isn't the size of the event. It's the ambush. Which is why you can't plan your way to unshakable. You can only train your way there. And the training changes what the event does to you. Alia Crum's work at Stanford has shown that the same stressor — identical event, identical load — can degrade your performance or enhance it, depending on the trained appraisal you bring to it. Change what the stress means and you change what your body does with it. Not metaphorically. Hormonally. The event is fixed. The response is trainable.
Different storms, same physiology
I wish I could tell you that surviving one curveball buys you an exemption. It doesn't. Mine include the diagnosis in 2005 that came with a month to live — still here. My father, in 2014, going in for an operation with a one per cent risk and never coming home. Our house catching fire while we slept in 2019, and being destroyed. There's no protocol that stops the pain. The training doesn't spare you the grief. What it does is keep you functioning during the crisis, and let you carry the people who need carrying while you're bleeding too. Your storms may not look like mine. The litigation. The regulator's letter. The divorce. The co-founder who turns. The diagnosis in someone you love. Bankruptcy, or the layoff. Different storms. Same physiology.
Three principles
Train the state before the storm. You don't learn to swim in the shipwreck. Ninety seconds to five minutes a day of deliberate physiological training, so that the calm response is the trained response, already in the body before it's needed. You fall to your training. Make sure there's training to fall to. Receive the hit as information, not verdict. The first ninety seconds after impact decide the trajectory. The neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor described how the chemical surge of an emotion flushes through the bloodstream in roughly ninety seconds; after that, whatever you're still feeling is being re-triggered by the story you're telling yourself about it. Ninety seconds of chemistry. Everything after is narrative — and narrative is trainable. Recover between rounds. Stress hormones don't clear because the meeting ended. The residue accumulates, and accumulated residue is how high achievers end up in shadow burnout: still hitting the targets, running on empty. Recharge isn't retreat. It's the precondition for meeting the next hit and growing from it — what Nassim Taleb calls antifragile. Not merely surviving stress, but getting stronger because of it. That's the destination. Not resilience. Antifragility.
Back to the bathroom floor
Blood. Pain. Consciousness going. A crisis kicking in that can kill. I defaulted to my training. Self-talk. Focus on the next action. Tactical breathing. I picked up the phone and dialled 999 — calmly — while the lights were going out. Paramedics. A&E. Worked on straight away. And back at the microphone a few days later with a bandaged foot. The most important detail, which I know you're waiting for: Buddy, the dog, recovered considerably faster than I did. This month a curveball may land in your lap — hopefully a small one. The email that detonates your afternoon, the deal that goes quiet, the call you didn't see coming. When it does, unless an immediate response is essential, give it ninety seconds. Feet on the floor. Exhale twice as long as you inhale. Let the chemistry finish its run. Then decide, and act. The curveballs will keep coming. Train the thing they hit.
Still delivering — paying too high a price? Or already performing — wanting to go further?