The Stall after Self-Awareness: Building the Endurance to Lead Through It

Written By Chad Truby

Co-Founder & CEO of PEAK Gravity Leadership

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that 95% of people believe they are self-aware, yet only 10–15% actually are.

And yet, studies from Korn Ferry consistently link high self-awareness in leaders to stronger performance, better decision-making, and increased organizational effectiveness.

So the question isn’t whether self-awareness matters. It’s why so many leaders stall once they begin to develop it. Because awareness doesn’t simplify leadership.It intensifies it.  It complicates it.  It challenges it.

As we talked about in the previous blog in this series, as your awareness increases, so does your exposure. You feel more. You see more. You carry more responsibility.

You notice the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
You recognize the behavior that needs to change.
You see your role in dynamics you once blamed on others.  You realize that as a leader, it all starts and ends with you. (Welcome to the role!) And that awareness creates tension.

Here’s the part most leaders don’t fully appreciate:

Your brain is wired to resist this.  To avoid pain, struggle, and tension. From a biological standpoint, we are designed to pursue efficiency and avoid unnecessary strain.  Especially when it comes to relationships.  We are social creatures. We default to familiar patterns because they require less energy.
Less risk. Less uncertainty. It’s not weakness. (At least not yet) It’s wiring.

So when awareness asks you to do something different—
Have the harder conversation
Hold a higher standard
Show up in a way that feels unfamiliar—

Your system pushes back.  Not loudly.  But subtly.

You hesitate.
You rationalize.
You delay.
And eventually… you default to what is comfortable. 

Back to what’s known.
Back to what’s “easy”.
Back to what requires the least resistance.

This is where most leaders stall. Not because they don’t know what to do. But because they haven’t built the capacity and the endurance to stay steady in the discomfort that awareness creates.

For awareness to stick, for this to become a practice, leaders must realize that Awareness is an infinite game.  Scholar James Carse sums this up perfectly in his book Finite and Infinite Games (and recently popularized by Simon Sinek’s book Infinite Game): "There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

Awareness is not a win or lose situation.  It is about continuing the play!  

You don’t “arrive” at awareness. You practice it. Over time. Through repetition. Under pressure. The same way endurance is built.

And like endurance, the goal isn’t to eliminate discomfort. It’s to expand your ability to operate within it. So how do leaders actually move through this resistance? Not perfectly. But progressively.

1. Build the Discipline to Pause (Before You Default)

Awareness shows up in real time, but so does your conditioning. The critical moment is the space between stimulus and response. Most leaders lose the battle there.

The practice is simple, but not easy:

Pause.

Create just enough space to recognize: “This is the moment I would normally default.”

That pause is where choice lives. And over time, that choice becomes a new pattern.

2. Normalize Discomfort as a Signal—Not a Stop Sign

Most leaders interpret discomfort as a reason to pull back. High-performing leaders learn to interpret it differently. Discomfort is not an indication that something is wrong. It’s an indication that something is changing. That you’re operating outside of your conditioned patterns. That growth is happening in real time. When you stop trying to eliminate discomfort…
and start expecting it…you remove its power to control your behavior.

3. Repetition Over Intensity

Leaders don’t change because of one breakthrough moment. They change because of repeated exposure to new behavior. Having one hard conversation won’t redefine you. But having it consistently will. Staying present once doesn’t build endurance. But doing it again and again does. This is where most leaders underestimate the process. They look for immediate transformation. But the real shift happens through sustained practice.

Because this is the truth most people avoid: Awareness makes leadership harder before it makes it better. But the leaders who break through? They stop trying to escape the weight. They train for it. They expand their capacity to hold it. To operate inside it. To lead through it. Because at the highest levels, leadership is not about avoiding resistance. It’s about building the endurance to move through it.

Consistently. Intentionally. Over time.

So if you feel the pull to go back to what’s familiar… That’s not failure.

That’s the moment the work actually begins.