Reading Your Dashboard: When the Warning Lights Come On

We have taken the first two weeks of March addressing tension between calling and reality.

Week one was about staying faithful when your calendar doesn't match your calling.

Week two was about releasing burdens you were never meant to carry.

This week, we're getting even more practical on the Principle to Practice series: learning to read your own dashboard before something breaks.

I find it interesting and most probably a Holy Spirit intervention that I had to take this particular blog to heart before I even finished drafting it.

Because here's the truth—your body, emotions, relationships, and spirit are constantly sending you signals. Warning lights flash when you're overloaded, but many of us ignore them until they break down. (Remember my ice tray moment – looking back, I see that as an early warning sign that I didn’t fully heed at the time.)

The Dashboard You're Ignoring

When the check engine light comes on in your car, you don't ignore it and hope for the best. You know that light is telling you something important—and if you don't pay attention, a small problem becomes a bigger, and more expensive, one.

Yet when the warning lights flash in your own life, do you push through? Tell yourself you can handle it. (yup) You convince yourself it's just a busy season and things will calm down soon. (ugh…yes)

They rarely do. In my own life, I use the analogy of being on yet another spin cycle, constantly wishing the washing machine of life would just stop already…

And meanwhile, the signals get louder. Your body tenses. Your sleep suffers. Your patience shortens. Your joy evaporates. Your relationships strain. Your time with God feels dry and obligatory. I experienced many of these symptoms in the past few weeks.

These aren't character flaws. They're warning lights.

Why High Performers Risk Minimizing the Signals

Here's the irony: the leaders most capable of enduring are often the ones most at risk of ignoring their limits. I include myself here, too. I find it difficult to admit that I’ve hit a limit of any sort, and while getting better, I’m not there yet – often crossing the limit line a bit, and then realizing it.

You've built a high capacity for stress. You've trained yourself to push through. You've made it this far by being resilient, so you assume you can just keep going.

Resilience without rest isn't strength. It's a countdown to collapse.

You miss the signals because:

• You mistake endurance for faithfulness. Just because you can keep going doesn't mean you should.

• You equate rest with weakness. Our culture has sold you the lie that needing a break means you're not tough enough. I admitted to a family member that I have found it more and more difficult to just rest. How does one rest? I’m taking my own advice from LeaderPrint training – that rest isn’t passive - it’s being more God-centric than world-centric. It’s giving myself some room to breathe, listen, be.

• The mission feels urgent. There's always one more thing, one more fire, one more person who needs you. Stopping feels irresponsible. I slowed down the roll out of LeaderPrint and the sky didn’t fall. Nobody banged on my metaphorical door with accusatory statements. When you work on a God-sized vision, it’s in His time and according to His process, not yours. Letting go and slowing down a mission takes belief and total trust in the one that holds the mission in His hands.

• You don't know what normal feels like anymore. You've been running on fumes for so long that you've normalized dysfunction. We are all guilty of normalizing some or other dysfunction in our lives. Having a trusted person to reveal these to us is critical. Align yourself with others who are thriving in a normal you aspire to.

The Warning Lights: Physical

Your body tells the truth even when your mind lies to you.

• Chronic fatigue. You wake up tired. Rest doesn't restore you. This isn't laziness—it's depletion.

• Physical tension and pain. Tight shoulders, headaches, GI issues that won't resolve. Your body is carrying the stress your mind won't acknowledge.

• Sleep disruption. Either you can't fall asleep because your mind won't stop, or you wake at 3 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. Your nervous system is stuck in overdrive.

• Getting sick more often. When your immune system is compromised by chronic stress, you're more vulnerable to everything.

If you wouldn't ignore these signals in your car, don't ignore them in your body.

The Warning Lights: Emotional

• Irritability and impatience. Small things set you off. You're short with people you love. Your fuse is non-existent.

• Apathy or numbness. You used to care deeply. Now you just feel... nothing. This isn't peace. It's emotional shutdown.

• Anxiety that won't quit. The constant low-grade hum of worry. The sense that something bad is always about to happen.

• Loss of joy. Nothing feels fun anymore. Even the things you used to love feel like obligations.

These emotions aren't the problem. They're messengers. And the message is: You're overloaded.

The Warning Lights: Relational

• Withdrawal. (Self-Protective) You're pulling back from people because you have nothing left to give. Relationships feel like one more demand.

• Increased conflict. (Over-Reactive) You're picking fights, misreading intentions, defensive when you used to be collaborative. In my years of coaching people to rewrite internal scripts, one of the false belief threads shows up as hypersensitivity. When you start taking things personally, and over-reacting – stop pointing the finger at other people or situations and take note of the fingers pointing your way. Ask yourself, “What really matters here?” or “What do I know to be true?” Any well phrased curious question will engage the better part of your brain and help you recognize just what’s going on. Take charge of your thinking again.

• Isolation. (Avoidant) You tell yourself you're fine, but you're not letting anyone close enough to see the truth.

When you start avoiding the people who know you best, it's because you don't want them to see what you already know: you're not okay.

The Warning Lights: Spiritual

• Dry, obligatory time with God. Prayer feels empty. Scripture feels lifeless. You're going through the motions, but there's no connection.

• Loss of peace. The deep, settled trust that used to anchor you? Gone. Everything feels shaky.

• Cynicism creeping in. You used to believe God was at work. Now you're not so sure. Doubt isn't always bad—but chronic cynicism is a warning sign.

Elijah experienced this. After the dramatic showdown on Mount Carmel, he collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die. Even prophets hit empty.

God's response wasn't rebuke. It was rest, food, and presence. The warning light wasn't Elijah's failure. It was his body and soul saying, I need to stop.

I remember the saying, “If God feels far away, recognize that He didn’t move – you did.”

What to Do When Your Warning Lights Come On

Here's the hard part: recognizing the signals is only the first step. You have to respond.

• Stop pretending you're fine. Name what's happening. Out loud. To someone you trust. "I'm not okay right now" is not a failure—it's honesty.

• Take the smallest next step. You don't have to fix everything today. But you do have to do something. One early night. One conversation. One boundary.

• Get help. A counselor. A spiritual director. A trusted friend. A coach. You weren't meant to recalibrate alone.

• Protect margin aggressively. Cancel something. Delegate something. Say no to something new. Your calendar is not a measure of your worth.

• Come back to stillness. (Remember week two from February?) This is where you hear God again. This is where clarity returns.

 

The Cost of Ignoring Your Dashboard

Ignoring warning lights doesn't make them go away. It makes the breakdown worse.

Burnout. Broken relationships. Health crises. Moral failures. Loss of calling.

None of these happen overnight. They're the result of months or years of ignoring signals your body, mind, and soul were sending.

The tragedy isn't that the lights came on. It's that you ignored them and kept going.

One Challenge This Week

Pay attention.

Stop long enough to ask: What is my body, mind, soul telling me right now?

Write it down. All of it. The physical signals. The emotional red flags. The relational strain. The spiritual dryness.

Then ask: What's one thing I can do this week to respond instead of ignore?

Not ten things. One.

Because recalibration doesn't happen all at once. It happens one honest step at a time.

Your dashboard is talking. It's time to listen.

💫 Next week: The Dance Between Doing and Being