“LIFE IS PAIN HIGHNESS”…THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS
“Life is pain, highness, anyone who says differently is selling something.” One of the many epic movie quotes from the cult classic The Princess Bride. One of the things that makes a great movie quote great, is the fact that it is quotable in every day life for the good or the bad. In a nutshell, it applies.
The last several weeks, my leadership journey has not been so pleasant. In fact, it’s been down right grinding. I started to feel my energy level getting lower, as well as my patience for my kids, team, and self slowly bleeding away. In going through this I am reflecting on a couple other things that I think are worth writing about, so here goes!
Not everyone makes the choice to proactively engage growing as a leader. This; however, does not mean that they don’t lead in particular areas of their life, but rather that they choose to not grow their influence and skill. This seems to work for a time because in the vacuum of our mind, if there is no growth then there is no pain. If things stay the same, and no one rocks the boat things will stay that way. The challenge is that we don’t live in a vacuum but in a world that, given enough time, will bring pain to our doorstep and storms to our ship even if it is in harbor. This is scary because by the time that pain finds us, we have not learned how to learn from it and grow, but rather we find ourselves free-falling and grasping for something to cling onto while asking “why me?!?!” Little do we realize in that moment that we don’t have some special target on our back, but we are simply in the human experience like everyone else.
So the journey looks a little like this:
Choose to grow as a leader (a person) and attack the pain that growth brings to you
Choose to avoid the pain of growth and have pain attack you
So here is what I’m learning, and I hope it helps you:
1.) Measuring your pain and experience to someone else is useless.
There will always be people that have suffered more than you and less than you, people that have dealt with it better than you and worse than you. None of that is in your control, but you saying “Yes” to growth and going after it is something you can control. You can always be the best prepared as possible and whether that is enough or not is not in your hands.
2.) Embracing a leadership and personal growth journey is a freeing commitment
A train has a unique kind of freedom because of it’s “all or nothing” commitment to it’s track. Similarly, there are freeing commitments we make in life like marriage, loving our children, commitment to our faith, and growing as a Leader. All of these things are uniquely freeing because they limit options (within the scope of what we control) and force us to move forward. To walk through a hard time and know that all the pressure and stress is creating a diamond out of carbon is freeing.
I’m learning lots more, but for now this is enough. Maybe I’ll grab another epic Princess Bride quote for the next installation.
