Catching the First Arrow

Hospitality gives us plenty of opportunities to lose our cool. The team is short, the delivery is late, someone’s called in sick and then, just when you think you’ve got it under control, someone walks into the office with another problem. It’s easy for one stressful thing to quickly become five.

There’s a useful metaphor for this called Catching the First Arrow.

The first arrow is the thing that happens. The stressor.

The second arrow is what happens inside you: the frustration, worry or stress about what it means for the day ahead.

Then someone comes into the office with another problem. Because you’re already wound up, you snap at them.

That’s another arrow.

Then you feel bad about snapping. That’s a fourth arrow, and by now your whole morning has gone arse up.

The important thing is that only the first arrow was unavoidable.

Catching the First Arrow means noticing that initial moment of stress before it starts to leak into everything else.

You can’t always control what happens. You can control what happens next. And the earlier you catch it, the easier it is to choose your response rather than letting your mood choose it for you.

Try it this week

Keep an eye out for your first arrows. Notice the moment something happens and you feel yourself starting to tense up, get frustrated or worry. Before you do anything else, pause. Take a breath. Notice what’s happening. Then ask yourself: “What’s the most useful thing I can do next?”