The Challenge of Leaving Home No Matter Your Age

What was it like the last time you left home? Or someplace you became accustomed to and comfortable in? What did you feel? What did you think? What did you imagine?

The idea of leaving home conjures up a particular set of images. When most people think of leaving home they think of moving to another location. That’s understandable and the easiest option to imagine for leaving home.

Leaving the place of your birth: might mean leaving the country;           

Leaving the home you were raised in: leaving the city or state of your youth.

Leaving your current home: moving to another part of the city.      

Leaving your current job: there’s no telling where you’d have to move to.

The thought of leaving home can also evoke predictable emotions:

Fear --- which is associated with entering the unknown; or

Freedom --- leading your own life in your way; or

Burden --- all the tasks that have to be done to move; or

Adventure --- All the newness you will experience. 

One emotion that is predictable is the feeling of release --- feeling stuck and leaving behind all that you’ve become accostomed to.

Too often management, in any type of business, naively believes that because their employees are “of an age” meaning that they are old enough to drive, drink, and deliver daily work that means that they are psychologically mature.

But all too often they aren’t. All too often they are insecure. So they are reluctant to speak up in meetings, afraid they will be “wrong.” Or they are competitive, abrasive, and rude to other employees.

As managers, they may be uneasy about critiquing those who report to them, afraid of hurting people’s feelings, so they indulge inadequate production whether it’s the hours spent at work, how they relate to cross-functional teams, or simply the quality of work produced.

When my wife Judith Sherven, PhD and I explore these and many other issues with managers we often have to go “fishing” into their early family background. Why? Because they haven’t been able to truly grow up and leave home in the areas where they are being held back. Of course they aren’t aware of this until we help them see it, but it’s effecting their work nonetheless.

 In late February, I’ll be releasing the first two books in my autobiographical fiction Leaving Home Trilogy. Book one –Worship of Hollow Gods – Book two An Ambition to Belong. The series deals with the struggles of discovering and leaving behind what kept me bound to and in unconscious loyalty within the primitive and punishing beliefs of my immigrant Eastern European Polish peasant family in 1950s Detroit.

 To celebrate the launch with every purchase of BOOK ONE --Worship of Hollow Gods I am giving away free a copy of BOOK TWO -- An Ambition to Belong. To receive notification be sure to sign up at  goo.gl/QXnZKM