The PERFORM Experience

People are sometimes surprised that I talk about grief and high performance in the same breath. Aren’t they opposites? One is about falling apart, the other about thriving?

Actually, they’re built on exactly the same foundation: capacity.

Grief shrinks your capacity, often dramatically, and usually invisibly. Performance depends on capacity, on having enough energy, focus and steadiness to do what matters. So when we ignore grief, we’re not just being unkind. We’re quietly draining the very thing performance runs on.

Here’s what I’ve learned, the hard way and the researched way. The path back to performing well after a loss isn’t pushing through. It’s the opposite. It’s knowing your capacity honestly, working within it, and rebuilding from there.

This is why “get over it” is such terrible advice. It asks you to perform from a capacity you don’t currently have, which is how a hard season becomes a breakdown.

Growing with grief is the better way. You don’t leave the loss behind. You build a bigger life around it, and your capacity slowly returns, often deeper than before. That’s not toxic positivity. It’s just what the research, and a lot of lived experience, actually shows.

Whether you’re grieving, leading, or both, the question is the same. What’s my capacity today, and how do I work with it rather than against it? Answer that honestly and you’ve got the foundation for everything else.