When Life Freezes, Leaders Refresh

There are days when life feels stuck. You sit in front of a computer, the cursor spinning endlessly, the screen refusing to respond. At some point, you press that familiar command: refresh. Not because everything is smooth, but because something has frozen.

That’s the paradox. You never hit refresh when things are flowing; you hit refresh precisely when life is jammed. Leadership is much the same. The instinct on a heavy day is to push harder, but growth often comes through the discipline of resetting, reframing the very pressures that threaten to bury you.

Satya Nadella captured this truth in his book Hit Refresh. He led Microsoft through a cultural transformation by pressing reset on an organization that had grown rigid and stuck. The world saw a tech giant struggling to keep up; Nadella saw an opportunity to rediscover identity, rebuild culture, and reimagine the future.

Identity is tested not when it is easy, but when it is rare. A swimmer is most truly a swimmer on the day he does not feel like swimming, yet swims anyway. As a Malaysian, my identity was more obvious when I lived in Australia than at home. Because it was rare, it shone brighter. In the same way, when the day feels stuck, that is when the discipline of refresh proves most essential.

Training Grounds: From PSLE Pressure to the Gym Floor

Today, I spoke with my sister in Singapore, who had just celebrated her daughter completing the PSLE exams. The relief in her voice was matched by exhaustion. For months, their household had been consumed by tuition, mock tests, late-night revisions, and stress. Parents and children alike carried the weight of a system that equates worth with scores.

In contrast, I thought of my own children. They laugh, play, and share openly with me. They still face my impatience at times, but their childhood is filled with discovery, not only pressure. That willingness to reveal what they love is not just a sign of freedom. It is an indicator of relationship.

Academic skills can be acquired quickly later in life. Emotional resilience cannot. That is why systems that squeeze children into performance-only molds create brittle adults. Research backs this. A 2022 Singapore study found nearly 1 in 3 secondary students experienced anxiety and burnout linked to exams, with PSLE often cited as the starting trigger. In South Korea, the world’s highest-ranking OECD country for study hours, suicide tragically remains the leading cause of death for teenagers.

The gym teaches a different lesson. Weakness is not a failure. It is the necessary prelude to strength. You do not enter a gym to feel strong. You enter to feel weak, so that growth can happen. Romans 5:3–5 puts it this way: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”

The pressure of exams, of leadership, of business. These are weights. They can either crush or condition, depending on whether we learn the discipline of leaving them behind when the training is over.

Iron Sharpens Iron: Entering Singapore, Returning to Malaysia

Crossing into Singapore often feels like walking into a gym filled with elite athletes. People I meet there are sharp, analytical, and disciplined. Conversations are filled with structure, logic, and drive. As a Malaysian, I feel the contrast. We are more laid-back, more flexible, more relational. Both cultures have strengths, but the intersection is where growth lies.

Iron sharpens iron. To grow, you must first feel dull. To become wise, you must first feel stupid among the wise. To build wealth, you must first feel poor among the wealthy. This paradox is universal.

Satya Nadella reshaped Microsoft not by clinging to what the company already was, but by admitting weakness. He re-centered the culture around empathy, humility, and growth mindset. That humility to feel “less” was precisely what unlocked more.

Easy has a cost. If you surround yourself only with those who make you comfortable, you will never grow. The gym does not exist to make you feel good. It exists to make you feel sore. But the soreness is proof of progress.

And so I enter Singapore as training ground, but I return to Malaysia as battleground. Just as you leave the gym carrying not the weights, but the strength, I exit Singapore not carrying comparison, but carrying sharpened skills, renewed discipline, and a broader perspective to apply at home.

Pressure Points: Parents, Projects, and Principles

Today’s training ground was intense. It began with a parents’ coffee morning at school. These sessions always carry stress for the academic team. Parents bring hopes, concerns, and criticisms, and we as leaders must face the brutal facts. It is never easy. Yet it is essential. Just as in the gym, pressure is the condition for growth.

From there, I plunged into a tendering project for our purpose-built campus, debating technicalities with architects and consultants. Hours of detail, costs, and design drained every ounce of mental energy.

But the most frustrating weight came from a developer who broke trust. Our aim was noble: help teachers become homeowners, build community, create stability. Instead, their rudeness and shifting promises revealed a lack of principle. In Malaysia, too often integrity is sacrificed for convenience. I could not let this pass.

Maxwell’s Law of the Lid reminds us that leadership effectiveness is capped by leadership integrity. The McDonald brothers built a profitable restaurant, but their lid was low. Without vision and values, they could not scale. Ray Kroc raised the lid, but at a personal cost of years of sacrifice. Leadership is always a test of what you will stand for.

In this moment, I remembered my Purposebility vow: “Stand like a rock for principles and character. Swim like a fish for style and creativity.” This was not about style. This was about principle. And so, I stood.

Later, another weight emerged: a manipulative leader within my own team. Talented, yes. But insecure, self-protective, and constantly shifting positions on what we call “roti prata.” The lesson was not about him. It was about me. About deciding what I will never become. That thirty years from now, no one would describe me that way.

Leaving the Weights in the Gym

The danger of leadership is carrying weights you should have left in the training room. After the coffee morning, I had to consciously leave those stresses at the school. After the tendering meeting, I had to leave the blueprints behind. After confronting the developer, I had to leave the anger at the door.

Leadership is not about carrying every burden everywhere. It is about carrying the right ones in the right places. A barbell makes you stronger in the gym. But if you insist on carrying it to dinner, it will only crush your relationships.

Mother Teresa embodied this discipline. She could cry with a grieving family at a funeral, then walk out and be fully present for the next child she served. Donald Trump, controversial as he is, also demonstrated a peculiar resilience. Rain or shine, after chaos, he would still go play golf. Some saw it as carelessness. Others as the discipline of presence. Either way, he showed that maturity lies in knowing what truly matters.

Romans 5 reminds us: suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, character hope. The sequence only works if we know when to lay the weights down.

The Discipline of Refreshing Daily

By the time I returned home, I was exhausted. Triple the usual load of stress had burned through me. I missed the chance to sit down properly with my wife a weight I regret. Yet even in my fatigue, I still found enough presence to laugh with my children, to respond to their stories, to walk the dog.

Maxwell’s Law of Process reminds us: leadership develops daily, not in a day. Refreshing yourself is not a one-time reset, but a daily discipline. Some days you succeed fully. Some days you succeed halfway. But the practice matters.

Every evening walk with my dog Loki reminds me. He never fails to be cheerful, consistent, ready. Rain or shine, he is present. And I want to be like that to refresh daily, not for comfort, but for consistency.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

The world thinks refresh means escape. That refresh is about rest, vacations, or avoiding responsibility. But refresh is not retreat. It is return.

The opposite of refresh is not tiredness. It is self-preservation. Leaders who cling to self-preservation will eventually break under pressure. Leaders who learn the discipline of refresh emerge stronger, freer, and more present.

Legacy is not built by those who never grew tired. Legacy is built by those who learned to hit refresh.