How Do You Respond?

Have you ever watched Hoarders, that show where someone’s been living with 37 years of expired condiments, broken lamps, and a thousand Beanie Babies that “mean something”? 

I saw one episode where a woman’s house was packed so full you couldn’t even get upstairs. As the clean-up crew shuffled sideways through the debris just to reach the bathroom, one guy picked up what looked like a petrified popsicle wrapper. “Just trash, right?”

Nope. It belonged to her daughter. It meant something. She told him to put it back.

Everyone could see it was clearly junk. But to her, it had emotional value. She’d held on to so much for so long that she couldn’t even see how it was suffocating her. Clutter had become normal. Her beautiful home was unlivable, and she’d stopped noticing.

So here’s the question:

What mental popsicle wrappers are you still hoarding?

That offhand comment from your colleague last year?

That meeting where you didn’t speak to say what you really wanted to say, and now you replay it in your mind like it’s your personal Netflix drama.

That promotion you didn’t get in 2019 that you’re still a little salty about?

Yes, all of it. Emotional clutter. And if you’re not careful, it piles up - until you can’t access your own upstairs.

Sometimes living stressed, offended, or tightly wound becomes so normalized that we forget that it’s optional. We let the past dictate the future. We carry around outdated storylines like they’re family heirlooms instead of expired receipts.

But here is the good news:

Today is a great day to take out the trash.

Life is messy. You’re going to react. You’re going to say the wrong thing, or not say the thing, or interpret someone’s silence as a personal vendetta. That’s human.

But resilience means circling back and cleaning it up. It means choosing to respond, not just react.

For most leaders I coach, the hardest part of resilience isn’t noticing the reaction - it’s initiating the clean-up conversation. That’s why we role-play. We rehearse the words. Because if you’ve been avoiding that convo with your teammate for weeks, you're probably not going to improvise your way into grace under pressure.

Let’s revisit our example from earlier - the client frustrated by a colleague who gave last-minute feedback. A simple clean-up script could sound like this: 

“I am nervous to have this conversation with you because I am not sure what your reaction will be. I need to clean something up with you. The way this occurs to me is that I had to keep asking you to give me feedback on the project. I felt like your Mom and it slowed me down. The meaning I made is that you don’t care about our department or how it will look if the project isn’t finished by the due date. Can you help me understand how it occurred for you? What can we agree to do differently next time?” 

That’s it. Honest. Vulnerable. Productive.

No TED talk required. 

And just to be clear: These conversations don’t have to take an hour.

But avoiding them? That creates a culture where people hoard resentment like it's a survival strategy.

So, what conversation are you avoiding right now? And what would shift if you just responded, cleaned it up, and made a new agreement? Think of it as emotional housekeeping. Less Marie Kondo, more “let’s not silently seethe in the break room.”