When the Ground Shifts, Go Back to the Rhythm

How returning to what you know can interrupt anxiety and restore your footing

There's something I've noticed in people who navigate pressure well.

It's not that they have better answers. It's not that they feel less afraid. It's that when things get uncertain, they don't improvise — they return.

The concert pianist, preparing for a high-stakes performance, doesn't try something new. She plays scales. The elite athlete, heading into the most important match of the season, starts with the same stretches he's done a thousand times before. The novelist, stuck and spiralling in her own head, stops trying to write and simply reads.

These aren't retreats into distraction. They are deliberate, practiced returns to what is known — when everything around them is anything but.

The Ground Beneath Your Feet

There's a reason this pattern shows up across so many disciplines, and I think it points to something worth paying attention to.

Our routines — the ones we've built and practised over time — are not just habits. In moments of pressure, they become orientation. They are the ground beneath our feet that makes clear thinking possible again.

When the world is spinning, the routine – the known rhythm we can return to - doesn't solve the problem. But it creates enough stability to face it.

Because anxiety, almost without exception, pulls us toward the unknown, uncertain outcome, the unanswered question, the worst possibility. The mind starts rehearsing scenarios that haven't happened, problems that may never materialise, and conversations that exist only in our imagination.

Returning to a known rhythm interrupts that spiral. It calls us back from speculation to solid ground.

Two questions you can use to bring you back to ground: What do I know to be true? and; What is something I know how to do right now? (my go to phrase is “start with prayer.”)

A colleague I once worked told me about the day one of their children went missing. I would have been beside myself. Yes, and they were. But what stuck with me (besides the relief at the subsequent return of his daughter) was what his wife did. She cleaned. He said she just kept cleaning the house from top to bottom. It helped her deal with the unrelenting fear and distress. It was house cleaning – a bit like the Karate Kid “wax on, wax off” rhythm that kept her from falling completely apart.

Whether it be a cleaning chore or making a cup of tea – we all have these rhythm anchors of both practical and spiritual nature.

The Leadership Dimension

For those of us who lead — teams, businesses, families — this matters more than we perhaps realize.

When you are anxious - you make reactive decisions. You move from the uncertain place rather than the stable one. You are responding to what you fear rather than what you know. And it costs you: in clarity, in trust, in the quality of your judgement, intentions, actions.

When you choose to build strong rhythms — a morning practice, a weekly review, a consistent way of thinking through challenges — is not just "organised." It builds you a return path. When the pressure spikes, you know where to go. Maybe your return is walking around the building while breathing deeply, when you’re about to lose your temper.

Proverbs puts it plainly: "The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out." (Proverbs 18:15) Wisdom, in the biblical sense, is not a flash of inspiration in a crisis. It is the accumulated, practised orientation of a life well-tended.

The routine, in that sense, is where wisdom lives between the hard moments. Life consists of many more routine, hum drum actions, than brief seasons of brilliance and breakthrough. Yet it’s the routine that builds the momentum for the breakthroughs.

For Those of Faith, It Goes Deeper Still

For a person of faith, the daily rhythm — the morning prayer, the familiar passage of Scripture, the quiet ritual before the noise begins — is not just a tool for managing stress. It is a practiced path back to the most foundational truth there is:

God loves you. God is bigger than what you are anxious about.

Let that sit for a moment.

The performance — whether you nail it or fall flat. The diagnosis — whatever it turns out to be. The relationship — the one that feels fragile or broken or uncertain. The business decision — the one you still don't know if you called right. The vision challenge – when you’re not sure if God is really with you on what you’re thinking.

None of these will move the needle without God.

The Psalmist understood this orientation. "I have set the Lord always before me." (Psalm 16:8) Not sometimes. Not when I remember. Always — as a practised, rhythmic return to the thing that does not change.

That is what the routine carries us back to. Not certainty about outcomes, but certainty about something more durable: that we are known and loved by God. And from that place — that solid, unshakeable ground — everything else can be faced.

A Note on Starting Small

If you're reading this and thinking I don't really have those kinds of rhythms — I want to offer you this: start with one.

Not a perfect morning routine. Not an hour of journaling before sunrise. Just one small, consistent return point. Five minutes of stillness before the day begins. A verse you read slowly over coffee. A short prayer before your first meeting. Taking a deep breath and focus on God for 2 minutes before you start your car…

Double down on your practical rhythms. Like the oxygen mask on the plane, you never know when a simple rhythm becomes a lifeline.

The goal is not the routine itself. The goal is what the routine does — which is to orient you, again and again, toward what is true before the noise convinces you otherwise.

If you haven’t ever been that person to make the bed first thing in the morning, remember what William H. McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL admiral said, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” (this later became the bestselling book Make Your Bed.) Less about housekeeping, it’s anchoring the day with an established rhythm. It also starts you off with a sense of accomplishment, which changes the pathways in the brain for the better.

For more than ten years, I have established the rhythm of spending the first 30-60 minutes of my day with the Lord. Not every single day, granted. I am human. Interestingly, when I waver from routine, it’s when I’m resting or traveling. I never skip my anchors when I am in the “storms” of life. The more chaotic and stressful my circumstances, the more I’ve found that the established routine that I do automatically, without thinking about it, anchors me and helps me face even the worst days with a heightened sense of my resilience and the size of my God.

For Reflection

Take a moment with these questions this week:

1. What are the rhythms already in your life that help you return to solid ground? Are you protecting them, or letting them get crowded out by busyness?

2. When pressure spikes, where do you tend to go? Toward what you don't know (anxiety), or back to what you do know (stability)?

3. What is one thing you know to be true — right now, today? Not what you hope will be true. What is already true.

4. For the person of faith: When did you last let your routine do what it was designed to do — not just as discipline, but as a genuine return to the truth that God's love for you is fixed, unchanging, and unaffected by your current circumstances?

Jesus taught us the importance of our time away from the craziness of life and I particularly like this version from The Message:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11:28-30 ~ The Message) 

The most solid ground available to any of us is not a better strategy, a more certain outcome, or even a cleared calendar. It is the settled knowledge that we are known and loved by God – nothing that happens this week changes that. The key is learning your own version of those unforced rhythms of grace.

Your rhythms are the path to your return place when everything else is unstable. Guard them well.