"It's not just one thing," a client will tell me. "It's all of it: politics, the climate, money, AI, work, family. It's like the ground is moving under my feet."

There's a particular flavor to this feeling: exhaustion, quiet dread, and a sense that the old maps no longer fit the territory.

I notice that it sounds both very personal to the individual, with elements of burnout, confusion, and stuckness, but it's also profoundly collective.

You're not imagining it. Something real is happening.

I want to offer you a distinction that's been clarifying for me and for the leaders I work with: polycrisis and metacrisis.

Polycrisis is a word for the "everything, all at once" quality of our moment.

It points to the fact that we're not dealing with one crisis at a time. We're facing many crises that are occurring simultaneously, interacting with and amplifying one another.

Think about it:

Each of these on its own would be a lot.

What makes it a polycrisis is that they stack and entangle. The effects of one crisis ripple into the others. You feel it as systemic overwhelm—too many moving parts, too fast, with too little time to process.

Polycrisis is a helpful word because it validates your experience.

No wonder it feels like this. The storm is real.

But there's a deeper question: What is generating these crises?

Metacrisis is a term for the "crisis of crises"—the deeper breakdown in how our civilization sees, values, and organizes itself.

It's less about specific events and more about the operating system underneath:

A crisis of sensemaking: We no longer know who or what to trust, or how to build shared reality.

A crisis of meaning: Many people feel unmoored, disconnected from purpose or a larger story that makes sense of their lives.

A crisis of value: We've optimized for speed, scale, and profit, often at the expense of aliveness, relationship, and the more-than-human world.

A crisis of coordination: We have global problems, but our tools for working together are still fragile, fragmented, and often adversarial.

If the polycrisis is the storm, the metacrisis is the climate that generates the storm - and the next storm after that. And so on, relentlessly. 

Seen this way, our task isn't just to "get through" this particular wave of crises.

Our task is to intentionally shift the underlying way we make sense, choose, and coordinate—individually and collectively.

When we only see polycrisis, the natural responses are:

It's understandable. But it keeps us trapped at the level of symptoms.

When we see metacrisis, a different set of questions becomes available:

What is this moment asking of me at the level of who I am becoming, not just what I am doing?

How is my inner operating system entangled with the larger operating system we are all participating in?

What kind of attention, presence, and relationships are needed now?

Metacrisis framing doesn't magically make things easier.

But it can make them more meaningful. It returns some agency. It invites us into a different posture: from "surviving the storm" to "helping shift the climate."

A senior executive I work with came to me exhausted. She was running a sustainability initiative at her company, but felt like she was pushing a boulder uphill. Every win was fragile. Every setback felt crushing.

"I know what needs to happen," she told me. "But I can't get people to care. And honestly, some days I'm not sure I care anymore either."

We started by naming what she was up against—not just organizational resistance, but the deeper operating system that made "sustainability" feel like an add-on rather than foundational.

Then we worked with her inner operating system: the beliefs driving her approach (that she had to have all the answers, that leadership meant carrying it alone), the nervous system patterns keeping her in fight-or-flight, the way she'd disconnected from what actually gave her energy.

Over six months, something shifted.

She stopped trying to "convince" people and started creating containers where different kinds of conversations could happen. She brought her team into the questions rather than delivering solutions. She learned to sense where the system was ready to move and where it needed more time.

The sustainability work didn't get easier. But she stopped feeling depleted by it.

She told me, "I used to feel like I was drowning in the storm. Now I can see the weather patterns. I'm not trying to control them—I'm learning to navigate them. And that's completely different."

That's the pivot from polycrisis response to metacrisis navigation.

In The Pivot, I work with people who sense that learning fast problem-solving hacks and tips alone isn't enough.

They're feeling the polycrisis in their bodies and in their organizations—but they're hungry for a response at a deeper level.

We focus on:

Inner operating systems: The beliefs, habits of attention, and nervous system patterns that shape how you meet complexity.

Meaning-making: How you construct the story of what's happening and who you are in it.

Relational fields: The quality of presence and conversation you bring to teams, clients, and communities.

Embodied capacity: Building the ability to hold more charge, more ambiguity, more not-knowing—without shutting down.

I've watched leaders, coaches, and practitioners move from "I'm drowning in the storm" to "I'm starting to see the pattern behind the waves, and I know how I want to stand in it."

The outer conditions don't suddenly become calm. But their relationship to the moment changes.

They become stronger through challenge rather than depleted by it.

This can sound big and abstract, so here are a few simple places to start:

1. Language check

The next time you feel overwhelmed by "everything," ask yourself:

"What are the symptoms I'm reacting to (polycrisis)? And what might be the deeper pattern behind them (metacrisis)?"

Just naming the two levels can create a bit more space.

For example, in my case, I might say:

2. Attention hygiene

Pick one small commitment that reduces reactivity and deepens discernment.

For example:

3. Relational experiment

Bring this distinction into one conversation with a colleague, client, or friend.

You don't have to use the jargon. You can simply ask:

"If we zoom out one level, what might be the deeper pattern underneath what we're struggling with?"

Then offer a possibility from your own experience—not as the answer, but as an invitation to think differently.

For example, I might share: "I've been anxious about AI taking jobs. But when I zoom out, I realize the deeper pattern is uncertainty about my future—will I be able to get work as I age? Will I be financially okay? The AI anxiety is real, but it's sitting on top of these much older fears about security and worth that aren't even really about AI at all."

You're not diagnosing the other person. You're modeling the move from symptom to pattern by sharing your own process.

Notice how the energy in the room shifts. Notice what becomes speakable that wasn't before.

Notice how the conversation shifts.

These are small moves, but they're how we practice responding at the level of metacrisis in the middle of polycrisis.

If you resonate with this way of seeing—if you suspect that your real work is not just to cope better, but to pivot your way of being in the world—this is what The Pivot is for.

Reply with your biggest question about navigating this moment. I read every response.

And if you're sensing you need deeper work, I have 3 spots for 1:1 Pivot coaching opening in March.

With you in the weather,

Dave

P.S. Where do you most feel the "storm" right now—in your work, your leadership, your sense of purpose? Hit reply and tell me in a sentence or two. Sometimes naming it is the first step toward navigating it differently.