The CEO Activist

11Winning Hearts and Minds

I remember the moment it happened so very clearly.

It was just after dawn on an almost-glorious British summer day, and I was driving to a meeting so important to the future of my company that I had an anxiety in my stomach that I'd not felt for a long, long time.

I could feel the all-too-familiar sensation of panic swirling round my insides. My heart pumping, my palms sweating, and my mouth dry. I was fighting to keep my hands from slipping off the steering wheel, as I desperately tried to breathe my way through the rising sense of overwhelm.

I was driving my husband's car, and for some reason the sat-nav kept crashing. The usually reliable voice in my ear telling me calmly how to get from A to B was nowhere to be heard, and the screen guiding me by its simple, bright colours kept disappearing to black. No matter how much I punched the button, the voice was gone.

As I started to feel the sense of despair rise in my chest, I found myself at a roundabout with no idea where I was supposed to go. I yelled at the sat-nav once more for good measure, praying it would kick in and tell me which direction I was supposed to take – guiding me to my destination rather than take me down a dirt track to a dead end.

As I circled the roundabout time and time again, the imposing signs telling me which route to take felt more and more alien as the words blurred and their meaning meant nothing. Tears blurred my vision as I saw my meeting slipping away from me – and ...