We had eight miles to go. Eight miles to the safety of our hotel.

It had turned into one of those days every cyclist hopes for. Nearly perfect weather, a gentle tailwind pushing us across the open valleys of western Montana, snow-capped mountains framing the horizon like something off a postcard. My riding partner John and I were sixty-six miles into a seventy-four-mile day — Day 18 of a 3,500-mile ride across America to raise awareness for first responder mental health. Along the way we’d been stopping in small communities to screen my documentary, PTSD911, and start conversations that badly needed to happen. Our support crew had flown home for a graduation, so it was just the two of us on the road, soaking in one of the most beautiful stretches of the whole trip.

Then it changed. We’d watched dark clouds building for a couple of hours, and there was no alternate route, no shortcut — to reach West Yellowstone we had to ride straight at the storm. The moment we turned south, the wind hit us like a wall. The tailwind that had carried us all day became a headwind that fought us for every stroke of the pedals. Lightning in the distance, the temperature dropping, the sky going from dark to darker. Eight miles suddenly felt like eighty, and that last hour turned into one of the hardest of the entire ride.

Leadership feels a lot like that. Things are going well — your team is clicking, morale’s up, you finally feel like you’re making headway — and then, without warning, the storm shows up. It never asks whether your schedule has room for it. Maybe it’s a budget cut, a staffing shortage you didn’t see coming, an officer arrested for DUI, a personnel mess, a crisis at home, an accusation out of nowhere, a political decision that upends your department overnight. Every leader learns the same lesson eventually: the storms aren’t optional. The only real question is whether you’re ready when one hits.

And storms have a way of showing you what the calm days hide — your habits, your character, how well you actually hold up under pressure. Anyone can lead when things are easy. It’s when things start falling apart that you find out how prepared you really were. I’ve heard leaders say all they want is for things to get back to normal. I get the instinct, but I’m not sure I buy it. If the storm taught you something, or humbled you, or made you sharper, why would you want to go back to who you were before it? A storm doesn’t have to be something you just survive. It can be something that changes you for the better.

Here’s the thing, though — we don’t control the storms themselves. Politics, staffing, budgets, organizational upheaval, the curveballs life throws at us personally — none of that is really in our hands. What we do control is how ready we are before the storm ever forms, and that’s really where leadership starts: with leading yourself first. I’ve said before that the hardest person I’ll ever have to lead is the one staring back at me in the mirror each morning. When I’m running on empty — tired, distracted, unhealthy — I make worse calls the moment pressure shows up. If I can’t lead myself, I have no business trying to lead anyone else.

None of that preparation is glamorous. It happens in the routines nobody claps for. Mine starts most mornings with a two-mile walk — not really about the exercise anymore, more a chance to think, pray, and get my head right before the day starts. I try to practice gratitude on purpose, because it’s easy for leaders, especially first responders, to spend so much time responding to the worst of humanity that it starts to color how they see everything else. Gratitude is the corrective for that. Most weeks I’ll also try to reach out to a few people — a text, a call, just letting someone know the impact they’ve had on me — mostly as a reminder that leadership is about people, not tasks. And I try to pay attention to what I let into my head: the books, the podcasts, the conversations, the media. Whatever you feed your mind consistently is what eventually shapes how you lead. None of that happens by accident. It takes intention.

Out there past West Yellowstone, John and I couldn’t do a thing about the weather. We couldn’t stop the wind or make the storm move somewhere else. All we could do was keep pedaling — and looking back, it wasn’t that storm that made us capable of getting through it. Months of training before that day had already done the work. The storm just proved it.

Leadership works the same way. The habits you’re building right now are what determine how you’ll hold up when your next storm arrives — so don’t wait until you’re in the middle of one to figure out what kind of leader you want to be. Take care of your health. Watch what you let into your mind. Practice gratitude. Keep growing. The storms are coming regardless, but if you’ve done the work beforehand, they won’t just test your leadership — they’ll strengthen it.

I still think about those eight miles into West Yellowstone, fighting a headwind I had no power to stop. Leadership hands you the same deal: you don’t get to pick your storms, only how ready you are for them. And when your storm comes, you’ll find out it was never really about the storm. It was about what you’d already built before it got there.

What’s one habit you could start today that would leave you more ready for the next one?