I realized over the last few weeks as I have been breathing life into this blog that I have begun to lose strands of hair. Now, it’s not noticeable at all and it’s certainly not like I don’t have a few extra to spare, but it’s annoying and was surprising to say the least.
I mentioned this to a wise friend, who said, without even a thought,
“Lisa, you don’t need to sacrifice aspects of yourself to ‘give birth’ to something.”
Powerful.
The reality of this truth hit me fast and hard, and I realized that for so many years this is what I’ve been doing in my career – subconsciously sacrificing parts of myself or even parts of my life in order to see a Herculean project get launched or to breathe life into a business relationship, new job, or new opportunity.
Later that day I found myself thinking about the video I’d seen of Elizabeth Gilbert presenting at the TED conference in February of 2009. She spoke about how for the last 500 years creativity and suffering have been linked – which is to say the “birthing” of a new, creative work has been linked with sacrificing an aspect of one’s self or all of one’s self – and why this has come about.
One need only consider masterful artists like van Gogh or Hemingway to realize that this link has plagued the creative field.
Gilbert’s talk revolves around the fact that before the 16th century humans believed that you had a “genius” in essence “assigned” to you that came to you with the inspiration for your creations, and that whether or not your creation was of value was determined by this outside element.
She says it was about 500 years ago that society stopped believing that your “genius” was outside of you; rather, humans began to believe that whether or not what you created was of value was due to the genius you either had or didn’t have inside.
So, whereas in the past you couldn’t really take credit for a magnificent creation, you also were not to blame if what you created was worthless. Suddenly, all of the worth came from within the individual, and this is when suffering and sacrifice began to be associated with creative birth.
Once you’ve given life to something magnificent, people tend to expect you to do it again. And we as humans want to do it again. This pressure can torture a soul.
I think this unintentional soul torturing may plague leaders as well.
Think about it. We succeed because we create innovative products and services that grow our companies and create positive change in the world. We then get rewarded for this success and put into higher level roles where we are expected to do it again, this time facing more daunting challenges.
A leader who has turned around a business is expected to turn around another. A brilliant marketer who has successfully launched a new brand is expected to do it again. A trail-blazer who has launched a vibrant online community is expected to replicate their success. Yet often times they are expected to do these thing in different companies with different visions, strategies, values and budgets.
And just as Norman Mailer said, “every one of my books has killed me a little more,” (per Gilbert) it’s easy to consider the parallels and wonder if leaders suffer from their success and end up sacrificing parts of themselves (their health, values, ethics, commitments, their own passions) and their lives (their relationships, their dreams) in the process .
Why?
I came to realize that I had been unwittingly sacrificing along the way in my career in order to earn worthiness for the success of my projects and my businesses. After all, they must be worthy of accolades if I had sacrificed much to bring them to life… right?
Wrong. Obviously.
I now believe that deep down I knew the businesses, programs, products, services and initiatives could be successful on the merit of the vision, strategies, hard work, perseverance, teamwork and dedication that went into them, just as I believe writers know their books can be inspiring and artists know their paintings can move people. But I wanted to earn the right to be worthy of my successes – and I subconsciously thought that sacrificing part of myself was the way to do this.
I think I tried to do this with this blog. I subconsciously tried to earn worthiness for it by sacrificing part of me – my hair.
There is no way to earn worthiness for your creations via sacrificing aspects of yourself, no matter how seemingly small. All you get is depleted.
Once this realization hit me I stopped finding strands of hair on the floor.
Do you subconsciously doubt your own worthiness of success and of the value of what you create as a leader?
If so, are you sacrificing aspects of yourself because of this? Please share your thoughts in the comments…I learn so much from my readers!
(I’d also be honored if you’d consider subscribing here!)
…Photo is Rembrandt’s “The Sacrifice of Isaac” from 1634.
13 Response Comments
Great post and fabulous writing. Along life’s journey I believe their is ebb and flow. Time is valuable and it is finite. Sacrifice might be one way to look at it. Another way to look at it might be investment. Balanced investment.
When I started my blog, I spent 4-6 hours on the first post…and it wasn’t even good. After 2-3 of those posts, I realized there has to be a better way. I sacrificed 12-18 hours on those first 2-3 posts. No I invested it, and I learned from it. Then I changed it.
Whether it’s sacrifice or investment really depends on how you look at it and how you balance it. In my 20s, I wasted too much time, but I worked a lot. In my early 30s, I wasted less time, worked a lot and lived a little more. In my mid-thirties, I re-priortized and started finding balance.
Bottom line, work towards finding things you enjoy. The more of them you spend time on, the less it feels like sacrifice.
Dear Not Hairless Yet,
I absolutely love everything about your comment…including your wonderful name!
You are clearly one of the enlightened ones – to see what others could have viewed as failure and given up as simply a beautiful investment, and to have learned along your path in such a way that you are finding more and more joy in your life each day. You have inspired me today, Mr. NHY – I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to comment. And I sincerely hope to see you back here!
Fascinatingly insightful! I love the timeliness, especially how you touch on links to Godin’s recent trajectory (a la Lynchpin) and research coming out around behavioral economics and profit v purpose motivations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc).
My initial thought was “meh, I don’t know that I buy this.” But as I’ve pondered I think you are on to something important.
Leadership is art in sense that you are emotionally affecting the world around you. You are placing yourself in a more vulnerable state in order to effect change. That vulnerability itself is scary, but then we couple it with a notion that one must then sacrifice oneself in order to effectively lead!
How many would-be leaders aren’t leading because they don’t care to make the “necessary sacrifices,” or because they “don’t have what it takes” within themselves (assuming ‘it’ to mean the genius).
Hi Tim,
How cool that you didn’t buy it at first but then mulled it over a bit more. I think some will read this post and see no parallels to their own experiences – which is absolutely wonderful. I hope that there are only a few out there, like me, who were subconsciously sacrificing as a way to earn worth.
I think you definitely touch on something important when you mention that leaders make themselves vulnerable, inherently, in order to effect change. I think vulnerability can have very positive connotations, whereas sacrifice may be seen, by some, as noble but rarely is.
Thank you again for your thoughtful comments here!
It took me a while to comment because you asked me to “Think about it” – so I did 🙂 Glad to hear you stopped pulling your hair…..cuz after all….It Doesn’t Belong to You anyways!
http://www.twitvid.com/84N1U
Cate,
I really can’t tell you how much it means to me that you not only read the posts – but you print them out, ponder them and then take the time to video comment. It really just blows me away – and I am so genuinely thankful!
I think you raise a very interesting point – that if we think about it as so many elements affect what we create and send into the world, then we realize that it is much more of a “team effort” than we might have previously considered. So glad to hear that you do not sacrifice – I think you are such an inspiration!
With my deepest gratitude, Lisa
I also felt this pressure and it would be combined with my belief that I had to continually come up with “the next big thing.” Being 52 has taken the pressure off of being a wunderkind of any sort. Now I know that I create and lead as part of The Long Defeat ( Lord of the Rings) and as part of my efforts to balance myself as a father, husband, and servant. I make sure to seek validation from myself first.
Sorry for the ramble but your perspective is provocative.
Hans,
Kudos to you for knowing to seek validation from yourself and to trust that. You never ramble – you always provide me with a valuable, new perspective!
Thank you for being here – it’s not the same without you!
Lisa,
I will always remember being a college sophomore; a bunch of us girls were sitting in my dorm room talking. It was l968. All of a sudden one of my friends, who had beautiful long thick dark hair, ran her fingers through her hair and out came a big clump of hair. We were all so startled, because she was the confident, beautiful, smart young woman and her parents were wealthy! She even owned a car. She, of course, went to the doctor in the next few days and that was the first time that any of us ever heard of the diagnosis “STRESS.”
I am relaying this story today, because even though I hardly know you, I feel I have come to appreciate your visions, goals, aspirations over the past few weeks. This is strange world we find ourselves in these days…we all seem to want to talk and be heard, seeking validation. Somedays it is there and other days it is not.
In answer to your question: “Do you subconsciously doubt your own worthiness of success and of the value of what you create as a leader?”
I will tell you what I told my team when I resigned my position some years ago:
“Some of you have wondered allowed, ‘Judy, how will we get along without you?’ Always remember that no one person is indispensable, my contribution was probably somewhat less than most people thought and a lot more than a few of you thought. What is important is that you have the potential to produce great results because of who you are, and that is your strength.”
Thanks for listening and take care of yourself.
Judy,
As always – great points about knowing inherently that your potential to produce great results really does lie within, yet is only a small piece of what is being contributed on the whole. I will always listen and I promise I am taking good care… 🙂
Totally agree with Not Hairless Yet’s take on investment vs. sacrifice. Lisa, this provocative and well-written post has had me ruminating all day on something else he said that came to mind even before I read the comments.
When you do what you do in JOY (whether you do it to make a living or not), the doing becomes less about sacrifice and more about being in flow. I get, though, how launching and starting new ventures in any area of life can be both *intense* and *uncomfortable* even if joyful and satisfying.
So here’s another metaphor as an alternative to sacrifice, and you said it yourself – you’re “giving birth”. As a mother who has literally given birth to a baby, I’ve had product launches and blog launches both that harken me back to those days of pregnancy, labor and delivery. Yet the whole time I was growing my daughter, I never felt like I was sacrificing anything. Even though labor and delivery was intense and uncomfortable, it was temporary. In fact, the opposite of sacrifice was true. I was gaining and growing, and even if it doesn’t seem like it in the moment, you are too!
I write about these and other challenges on life’s journey at my new blog The Accidental Seeker (which MENG probably doesn’t know exists) so I welcome you to read and comment, and hope you will.
In the meantime, keep blogging and I’m so glad you won’t be losing any more hair!
Abraham was ultimately not required to sacrifice Isaac, but he was obedient to God. God spared Isaac but sacrificed his own Son. All of our work then should be to the Glory of God. “The feminist movement in our nation has encouraged women to promote their own self-interest by seeking positions of power. But history shows that those in power are called great leaders when they act sacrificially, out of love, to further the welfare of those under their care.” (not my words)
Thank you for sharing this, Mary.