Word: Steady

Sentence:

Steady is being the calm when everything else speeds up.

Passage:

In some of my darkest moments I have felt the calmest. My first teaching job in Chicago was built for chaos. The school held over 3,000 students and was notorious for gang fights. I was a teacher on a cart, pushing my way through five different rooms on three different floors. Every period was a new space, a new set of kids, a new kind of energy.

One day, during my prep time, I walked into the room where I would teach next. The room was empty. I remember the feel of the 1960s doorknob as I turned it, the way the light hit the marble floor, and then a loud crack and a sharp ring in my ears as I stepped through the doorway.

At my feet was a bullet. In the window on the second floor, a fresh hole. I bent down and picked up the bullet. It was still warm in my hand.

Then the bell rang.

I put the bullet in my pocket and taught one of the best lessons of my life. I never mentioned the bullet to the students. It was a loud class, the kind people like to label as “out of control,” but for me a loud classroom was a learning classroom. We read. We laughed. We argued about the text. We learned.

That day I realized something about myself. Steady leadership is not always flashy. It is consistent, calm, and clear. It is knowing that the room does not need my fear, it needs my presence.

To this day, when things get tense, I can still feel that bullet in my pocket. As a principal walking into fights and difficult conversations. As a parent raising a teenager who can test every nerve. As a partner when a hard truth hangs in the air. I reach for that memory and remind myself: you know how to be steady in the storm.

One of the hardest things we can do in a moment of crisis, or when someone is having a strong emotional reaction, is to not react right away. Our instinct is to move fast, to fix it, to fire back. Being steady asks us to do the opposite.

For me, steadiness starts with my feet.

If I slow my feet, I can slow my body.

If I slow my body, I can slow my mind.

So I walk slower. I talk slower. I breathe slower. And when I move slower, I start to notice more: the kid with his head down in the back of the room, the colleague whose smile looks a little forced, the way my own shoulders are creeping toward my ears.

You have heard the phrase “slow and steady wins the race.” I have always been less interested in winning the race. For me, slow and steady builds the relationships around us. When we build those relationships, we do not have to race. The real win is that the people around us feel safer, seen, and steady enough to keep going.

Your Turn:

Where in your life are you most tempted to rush, and what would “slow and steady” look like there?

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