Episode
Winning the Wrong Game
- Podcast
- The Buoyant Leader
- Published
- Jan 28, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 439
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
The Mindset Mastery Memo is for ambitious professionals who want to lead with clarity, composure, and confidence. Each edition offers practical tools, mindset shifts, and real-world examples to help you navigate pressure, build stronger teams, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can lead with intention, not reaction. My ragged breathing is drowned out by the hard rock soundtrack. I’m 7th on the leaderboard, and falling fast. All around me, women and men — mostly women — are sweating and grunting, churning out ergs and spiking their heart rates at paces I’m struggling to match. This is my first — and probably only — class at Orange Theory, a strip mall gym in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We’re all wearing identical bluetooth heart rate monitors and sitting atop identical Water Rowers that relay our stats to a bank of identical screens on the wall in front of us. Now 8th. Now 9th. Now I’m 11th, relegated to the second column as Fancy Nan 93 overtakes me in the race for the coveted top 10. I don’t know why I care about my ranking, but I sure do. I grit my teeth, tense my fingers, and redouble my effort on the water rower. Faster, faster, faster, I’m doing it, back in column 1, leaving Fancy Nan 93 in the dust, closing the gap between me and NellieCat — when WHAM. The rowing machine’s seat flies out from under me as I uncoil and I plummet unceremoniously onto the hard wooden frame, bruising my coccyx and wrenching my lower back. My heart rate also plummets, as do my ergs, and my self-esteem. I will spend the next 6 weeks recuperating, sitting gingerly, and shaking my head at my own foolishness. The Leaderboard Effect I smashed my ass bones because I was bent on competing with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Because I interpreted the existence of a…