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On Monday afternoon, I arrived back at home having spent the morning presenting to Ashley Latter's Entrepreneur Group, and I simply didn't have the energy or enthusiasm to start working through the backlog of emails and tasks that were staring out at me from my desktop.
In fact, after a Zoom call at 3:30 in the afternoon I actually called it a day and suggested to Annie that we take the dogs out for a long walk around the village.
Of course, I don't need to remind you that taking a walk, getting some fresh air and having a non-judgemental conversation with a thoughtful critic is always a brilliant way of breaking any kind of mental bottleneck.
What I wanted to share with Annie was that I was feeling overwhelmed, anxious and even a little depressed - not like me at all.
As we chatted, it gradually dawned on me that the problem wasn't my workload – in actual fact it was the wider environment in which I was trying to tackle that work.
Let me explain.
Last Friday I presented my final quarterly workshop of Q1 in Edinburgh and jumped in the car at around 5 o'clock to begin my 4 1/2 hour drive home.
I was, therefore, listening as the Trump, Vance, Zelensky situation broke and, like many others, sat open mouth and incredulous as to what I was hearing.
A considerable proportion of my journey home was spent listening to various commentators and later that evening as I sat and enjoyed a glass of wine with Annie, the two of us also discussed what we had either heard or seen. In fact, on Friday night, I even relived the encounter in the Oval Office on TV.
As the weekend unfolded, we ducked in and out of the news following the fallout from the encounter. On Saturday morning, as we travelled out for a farm shop breakfast, The Rest is Politics USA podcast with Anthony Scaramucci and Katty Kay (brilliant by the way).
On Monday morning, as I was about to leave for Ashley's training centre, Annie suggested that I would enjoy listening to the "emergency" podcast created by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart for The Rest is Politics UK - equally superb.
So, a diet of "Trump-scrolling" over a 4-day period - and by Monday afternoon I had lost my will to work.
A diet of toxic news from home and abroad has done me in.
So I've made a decision - to stay off that negative media obsession with the narcissist in the White House and his slimy VP - as well as all the other "bad news" that we are being fed with, day after day.
I appreciate that we have a moral responsibility to stay abreast of events around us (and I usually do that be a quick scan of an online newspaper once a day) but I have had to give myself a wake up call - a gentle slap in the face - to pull myself out of scrolling mode and get back on my game.
Also, to stop taking about negative media ("have you seen the news? Isn't it terrible?") and focus on my responsibility to be a beacon of light for those around me.
So that's been my journey - I was lost over the weekend - and now I'm found.
Think about yourself. You are a leader - for your team, your patients, maybe even your family look to you for a steer every day.
Make a choice - join in the Trump-scrolling, the BMW'ing (bitching, moaning and whining) - or - choose to be different and to say "I've seen the news, I appreciate that times are tough - but I'm going to remind you of the blessings we can count and the job we have to do today."
Turn it off.
I'm of to London in a few hours to meet my business coach Rachel Turner - thank goodness - if there was any lingering negativity, she will knock that out of me.
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