My Worst Nightmare

Today's Read Time: 3.42 minutes

I asked for a stack of business and finance books for Christmas. Predictable. On brand. One note. Very me.

My mom bought them. And then she added a Nora Roberts series in for good measure, “because reading is supposed to be fun and relaxing, Annie. You can’t work all of the time.”

Fun and relaxing is not an easy thing for me. Pausing is not either. I am more comfortable moving on to the next thing before the current one has fully landed.

But this week, I got caught.

I was driving to work, mentally walking through the day ahead. A coaching client first thing. A workshop in the afternoon. A board meeting to wrap things up. A full calendar, but not an overwhelming one. Manageable. Normal, even.

And then it hit me.

Three years ago, this exact day would have been my worst nightmare. I would have woken up with hives. Just the thought of that schedule would have sent me into a tailspin, questioning my capacity, my choices, and whether I was cut out for this at all.

What stopped me cold was not just what I was doing that day. It was what I was not doing.

 While I was heading into my own meetings, Jenni was speaking at an HR conference. Cole was running a webinar and putting the final touches on a website. Ally was prepping for training and delivering event materials for two other projects. Big, meaningful work was happening all around me, work that mattered and carried my name, and I was only directly delivering on a fraction of it. 

When I started Monyok Leadership, I was certain I would never work with other coaches, never partner with other facilitators, and never want someone else delivering on my behalf. This business was a consequence of my own making. If a project flopped, that was on me. If it succeeded, that was on me too. Control felt earned, necessary, and protective.

I could not imagine how anyone else could deliver my ideas, my processes, or my work the way I could. I had poured everything into it, my creativity, my intellect, my experience, and yes, my anxiety. That last one did (and still does) a lot of heavy lifting. Hyper-vigilance looks a lot like excellence when things go well.

So how did we get here?

Honestly, it was not part of the original plan, and for a long time it was not even intentional.

Before a year ago, I had only ever allowed one other person to run a workshop for me. A true emergency came up, and my friend Terri stepped in and bailed me out. She did great, of course, but instead of feeling relieved, I felt shaken.

Rather than opening my mind to collaboration, I doubled down. I added an emergency clause to my contracts and dug in deeper. Life happens, emergencies come up, and sometimes things simply do not work out, but I was determined to make sure it never disrupted delivery again.

Slowly, I made small exceptions, not because I trusted the process, but because I avoided certain work. Youth programming is not my thing. So, when someone on the team wanted to take those on, I let them. Otherwise, I would just keep pushing dates until I could get to it myself.

Then 2025 happened.

We went from part-time support to two full-time people on payroll, and suddenly I understood the phrase necessity is the fuel of innovation in a very personal way. I physically could not do enough work to support three incomes, no matter how hard I tried.

The better part of 2025 was learning that difficult lesson again and again and again. Wanting help is not enough. Hiring help is not enough. It turns out you actually have to let people help for it to be useful.

And letting people help means letting them try, letting them learn, and letting them improve. It also means loosening the grip on the kind of control that once kept you safe. That realization does not arrive with fireworks. It shows up in a series of painfully slow and uncomfortable moments.

And then one day, all of the sudden you find yourself tearing up on the drive to work. Not because you are overwhelmed, but because you are proud.

Proud of them.

Proud of you.

Proud of what is being built together.

It has been a busy start to 2026, with a full calendar and real stakes, but I am trying to ride the high of having glimpsed the potential of this team and what happens when I loosens my grip just enough to let others rise.

I hope you will find a minute this month to pause and sit in the potential of what the next twelve months could hold for your team. And it is my prayer that when you give yourself that moment, you feel not just anticipation, but pride in how far you have already come.

Even if you are terrible at stopping long enough to notice it. Maybe even especially then.