Business in Freefall? Follow the Bubbles: Why Inner Wisdom Outperforms Strategy When Everything Feels Upside Down

Let's start with a universal truth no business guru wants to put on a coffee mug:

The world is chaotic, uncertain, and often makes no damn sense.

And yet here we are—still showing up, still solving problems, still trying to grow something meaningful, whether it's a company, a community, or just the stamina to get through another email thread.

So, how do we lead, decide, and live in a world that feels like it's built on quicksand?

We start by understanding the role of Thought and Consciousness—and no, this isn't about becoming a Zen monk with a clipboard. This is about seeing how your experience is created moment by moment and how to work with your mind rather than against it.

That Thought? It's Just a Thought.

You know that feeling when your team is humming, everything's clicking, and then—bam—your brain chimes in:

"What if this doesn't work?"

Ah, yes, the great disruptor. The party crasher. The internal BUT.

"But what if the other team hates it?"

"But what if customers bail?"

"But what if we're wasting time?"

These aren't signs of insight. These are thoughts generated by a very human mind trying to prepare you for all possible disasters—even fictional ones.

And here's the key:

You don't have to fight those thoughts.

You don't have to follow them either.

You just have to see them for what they are.

Negative Feelings Are Not Enemies

When that gut-tightening "uh-oh" creeps in, it's tempting to treat it like a red alert. But most of the time? It's more like a pause button than a complete stop.

Negative thoughts lead to negative feelings, and those feelings can be helpful signals—like red lights at an intersection. They say:

"Slow down. Take a breath. Look both ways."

They don't mean: "Set up camp here. Unpack your emotional baggage and move in."

When we learn to feel the signal but not attach to it, we gain something powerful: clarity. We stop spiraling into worst-case hypotheticals and come back to what's actually happening.

A Moment Underwater: Learning to Follow the Bubbles

I learned this the hard way—off the northern California coast, scuba diving in near-black water. It was my first open-water ocean dive. I was young. The ocean hovered around 50 degrees. Visibility? Less than five feet.

My mom—my dive partner—was off doing skills with the instructor, and the surge separated us. All I could see was the faintest glow of her flashlight in the dark. And then I panicked.

My breathing sped up. I got disoriented and flipped upside down. We had been perched on a ledge about 35 feet below the surface—but I couldn't see the floor anymore. I had drifted off the shelf and was just hanging in the dark with no sense of direction.

Then I heard a voice—mine, but calm and clear:

"Watch the bubbles."

That was the wisdom. The bubbles go up.

I turned my body so my head followed their path.

I slowed my breathing. I stabilized my buoyancy. I did a slow 360, and just like that, I spotted the instructor cutting through the fog of water. I was back in the circle within seconds, finishing my skills.

That moment taught me something I use all the time now—especially in business:

When panic sets in, don't look for a rescue boat. Look for your bubbles.

Your internal compass, your common sense—it's there. It doesn't shout, but it shows you the next step.

You Already Know More Than You Think

Underneath the noise of doubt and second-guessing lives, something far more reliable: your own common sense.

Not the common sense you were taught in school or in leadership seminars.

The kind you were born with.

Call it gut instinct. Call it wisdom. Call it "that voice that's calm even when your Slack channel is on fire."

It's there. It doesn't need convincing. It just requires you to notice it.

And when you see that your thoughts create your experience—not the world around you—you begin to notice:

You're not powerless. You're just listening to the wrong station.

The Takeaway (And It's Not a Strategy)

No checklist here. No 5-point plan. Just this:

•               Thoughts come and go.

•               Feelings rise and fall.

•               Consciousness is the awareness that lets you notice rather than drown.

When you treat thoughts like bubbles instead of concrete, you move more freely.

When you trust your own wisdom more than your fears, you lead with less effort.

When you see negative feelings as red lights, not brick walls, you suffer less and learn more.

And when chaos swirls, remember the bubbles.

They rise.

So can you.

Want help guiding your team back to the wisdom they already have? That's what we do at JASC. We don't fix people—we help them see they were never broken, just momentarily upside down in the water.