The Discipline of Keeping Small Things Small
One of the most underrated skills in business and life is the ability to separate. To detach one thing from another. To stop the small from swallowing the whole.
Most people can’t do that. They blur everything. A single frustration becomes a full-blown identity crisis. One bad decision from a leader, and suddenly the entire company’s incompetent. One bad day, and suddenly life’s a disaster.
That inability to separate is emotional immaturity disguised as conviction.
The CEO’s Dilemma
When you’re running a company, you deal with chaos daily. People quit, projects fail, competitors blindside you, systems break. If you let every small fire define how you feel about the entire business, you’ll burn out in weeks.
I’ve learned that leadership isn’t about being unshakable, it’s about being able to isolate impact. A product failure doesn’t mean the company’s doomed. A frustrated employee doesn’t mean culture’s broken. A missed target doesn’t mean strategy’s wrong.
It means one thing: something specific didn’t work. That’s it. Fix that. Don’t torch the entire system.
I’ve seen founders spiral because they couldn’t separate their company’s identity from their personal identity. When sales dip, they take it as proof they’re failing as a person. That’s emotional fusion and it’s poison for clarity.
The best leaders I know have the ability to zoom in and out seamlessly. They can see a problem without labeling everything a problem. They don’t panic when something breaks because they know the system’s bigger than the symptom.
This isn’t just about business alone, it’s about psychology. Let’s say you’re angry. You’re not an angry person. You’re a person who feels anger about something. That distinction matters.
I’ve learned to pause when I’m pissed and ask, “Which part of me feels this way?” Usually, it’s one narrow slice not the whole me. Meanwhile, another part of me is grateful for what’s working. Another’s thinking about dinner. Another’s focused on tomorrow’s meeting. We’re not monoliths; we’re mosaics. The problem is, most people treat their momentary emotion like their entire identity.
You need to understand that the more you can separate emotion from evaluation, the more power you have.
So, when something goes wrong, train yourself to separate. Ask:
Most of the time, you’ll realize it’s just one thing.
And one thing’s rarely everything unless you let it be.
The ability to zoom in on a problem without letting it define the whole is a crucial leadership skill. It builds emotional resilience and clarity—usually learned through strong mentors or hard-earned experience.
This hits hard. Real strength isn’t in reacting fast, it’s in pausing long enough to think clearly. Usman Asif
Usman Asif Well said! Maturity is indeed about embracing complexity and ambiguity. Let's focus on building bridges, not burning them.
Powerful insight! True maturity lies in balancing emotion with judgment seeing the full picture without letting impulses dictate decisions.
What went wrong? What did I still do right? Asking these questions helps you see separate parts of a situation. It teaches you to focus on the real issue instead of letting emotions make it bigger than it is.