#33 — Emotional Amputation

Collect some triumphs.

Collect tragedies also.

Those masks travel together.

How might we deal with them?

Deny our joy? Deny the pain?

Endlessly pursue the next victory?

Let ourselves get mired in a swamp of despair?

Any of those responses leave one an emotional amputee.

Going Deeper: Ron Gold blends tragedy and triumph.

I've collected my own long list of triumphs and tragedies.

The life lesson is that both give shape to me.

I do well when:

1. I do not indulge or deny them.
2. I shorten the travel distance between them.

It works as follows: I let happy and sorrowful memories come. They can be memories but not an attempt to repeat the moment. They already had their time. I do not engage them but let them bear witness to what is birthing. They form me, but they do not have to drive me. I am aware of them but not motivated to recreate or avoid them. The mission of loving leaders who love leaders is what drives me.?

What drives you?

The work is hard.

Triumph tempts me to claim what does not belong to me but to others.

Tragedy wants me to blame others and not claim what belongs to me.

When triumph comes, I let myself feel elation but not without the accompaniment of sobering sorrow.

When tragedy strikes again, and it will, I do not stifle my sobs but weep, remembering the good that travels with me.

Held together, insight grows.

In My Backpack: Funny Times

A subscriber off and on again across the years, it's on again. Each time I let the subscription lapse, I miss it.

As a child who read the newspaper next to his Dad, he with the sports page and me with the comics, this little rag feeds my creativity and activates my smile muscles with panel-sized, readable font comics, serving them up on real newsprint.

Executive Thinking is a? source for being and thinking as an executive who links the world's future to their enterprise mission and its profitable operations. Here you will find some of the soul-searching, middle-of-the-night, honest reflections at the core of who we are becoming as leaders.

An Executive Advisor walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers, Mark L. Vincent, Ph.D., EPC, loves leaders who love leaders.

In his own third turn, Mark continues to grow his capacity for wise advising, artful facilitation, and public presentation.

Mark has founded?Maestro-level leaders,?Design Group International,?and the?Society for Process Consulting and authored a number of books, including Listening Helping Learning. He now partners with Mygrow to build an emotionally intelligent world.