1.04: Heartbreak: Facing Setbacks, Disappointment, and Injustice as a leadership practice

In episode four, Tim and Tuesday reflect on the mindset shift of seeing reality clearly—not just the future that we hope for—and the value of working with what is, right now.

1.04 —— SHOW NOTES

• Tim shares a quote from the podcast Scroobious Pip: “You work with what you’ve got—not with what you hope for.”
• The gap between working with what is, versus what you hoped for can feel like miles.
• We don’t often talk about the capacity to be in heartbreak—a key element of resiliency.
• “Heartbreak is a part of life no one can avoid. But I have choices to make about how my heart breaks. Will it break apart into a thousand shards, and perhaps be thrown like a fragment grenade at the ostensible source of my pain? Or will it break open into greater capacity to hold my own and the world’s suffering and joy? If I shut my heart down and allow it to get brittle, heartbreak will shatter it, injuring me and those around me. But if keep my heart supple by “exercising” it—allowing my suffering and the suffering around me to stretch that spiritual muscle—heartbreak will open my heart, bringing me more peace and adding to the world’s vital store of compassion.” —Parker Palmer

• Heartbreak can manifest as fury as much as it can manifest as openness. It’s not difficult to imagine and feel both.
• What are the practices that enable us to deal with heartbreak when it emerges? Does it help to pick fury?
• How do we work with our own heartbreak and the heartbreak of others around us… and how do we enable that to be something we’re choosing?
• Where’s the space given for heartbreak? Not to stay there, but to allow it, and maybe move from a soft heart. What’s the loss? What’s the risk if we let this go? What’s the risk of not doing it?
• Poem: The Repairman by John Coldwell
• He said that he had patched it as best he could
• But he warned, eventually,
• The whole lot would have to come down.
• He tucked his ladder under his arm
• And pressed into my hand a splintered shard of sky.
• Song of the episode: Lemon by N.E.R.D. and Rhianna
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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 33:57

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Episode cover image: source

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