The morning I broke down at my desk before a layoff announcement and what got me through it

There was a morning I sat down at my desk and started to cry.

My company had announced layoffs. It had been six months of waiting, and the weight of it was everywhere. You could feel it when you walked through the door — heavy energy, quiet, everyone making up stories in their heads.

I was always in before my team. That morning the emotions just caught up with me.

Then I thought: if my team walks in and finds me like this, they'll assume the worst. Without information, people don't fill in the blanks with good stories — they fill them in with bad ones.

So I had a choice to make.

I pulled out three things I'd picked up in coach training. Two physical, one mental:

1. Stand up and walk forward. Movement gets you back into action.
2. Look out the window at something far away — for me it was the mountains. It pulls you out of tunnel vision.
3. Say a mantra. Mine was: Be calm. Caring. Courageous.

That's what my team needed from me that morning — not my fear, but my intention.

The leader your team sees in the hardest moments is the leader you've been practicing to be in the easier ones. Not in the meetings or the performance reviews — in the mornings no one sees.

What do you reach for when you're caught off guard like that?