so much of all living was patience

Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking. 

Gary Paulsen

Hatchet. Simon Pulse. 1987

a call to solitude

Jesus modeled for us the spiritual discipline of solitude as an essential habit for spiritual renewal...

Here are some examples when Jesus engaged in external solitude as a means of fortifying His inner solitude of peace and purpose:

• When preparing for the tests of leadership and public ministry, He spent forty days alone in the desert. (Matthew 4:1-11)
• Before He chose the Twelve, He spent the entire night alone in the desert hills. (Luke 6:12) 
• When He had to choose between continuing to heal the sick or move to another place to teach the Good News. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed (Mark 1:35).
• When He received the news of John the Baptist’s death, He withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart. (Matthew 14:13)
• After the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus “went up on a mountainside by himself...” (Matthew 14:23)

By “solitude” we mean being out of human contact, being alone, and being so for lengthy periods of time. To get out of human contact is not something that can be done for a short while, for the contact lingers long after it is, in one sense, over.

Silence is a natural part of solitude and is its essential complement. Most noise is human contact. Silence means to escape from sounds and noises, other than the gentle ones of nature. But it also means not talking, and the effects of not talking on our soul are different from those of simple quietness...

Solitude and silence give us some space to reform our innermost attitudes toward people and events. They take the world off our shoulders for a time and interrupt our habit of constantly managing things, of being in control or thinking we are.

One of the greatest of spiritual attainments is the capacity to do nothing. Thus, the Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal insightfully remarks, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they are unable to stay quietly in their room.”

“The cure for too much to do is solitude and silence, for there you find that you are safely more than what you do. And a cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone.”

Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges

The Servant Leader: Transforming You Heart, Head, Hands & Habits. 2003. J.Countryman.

the healing potency of emotional ties

Perhaps the most telling testimony to the healing potency of emotional ties is a Swedish study published in 1993. All the men living in the Swedish city of Göteborg who were born in 1933 were offered a free medical exam; seven years later the 752 men who had come for the exam were contacted again. Of these, 41 had died in the intervening years.

Men who had originally reported being under intense emotional stress had a death rate three times greater than those who said their lives were calm and placid. The emotional distress was due to events such as serious financial trouble, feeling insecure at work or being forced out of a job, being the object of a legal action, or going through a divorce. Having had three or more of these troubles within the year before the exam was a stronger predictor of dying within the ensuing seven years than were medical indicators such as high blood pressure, high concentrations of blood triglycerides, or high serum cholesterol levels.

Yet among men who said they had a dependable web of intimacy--a wife, close friends, and the like--there was no relationship whatever between high stress levels and death rate. Having people to turn to and talk with, people who could offer solace, help and suggestions, protected them from the deadly impact of life's rigors and trauma.

Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence. Random House LLC, 2006. 358 pages, p.179

lonely at the top

The loneliness that often comes with being a CEO may seem like a small price to pay for the rewards, recognition, and power that come with the job. As the old joke goes, “It might be lonely at the top, but the view is terrific.”

But being isolated at the top can compromise your decision making and leadership effectiveness, both of which require having as much firsthand information about a situation as possible. Senior executives tend to be shielded from organizational problems and data; they are given limited and filtered information about their operations, employees, and customers. While time constraints make some of this filtering necessary, having a layer of handlers who make their own decisions about what the leader should or shouldn’t see exacerbates the isolation.

...deference to authority is deeply ingrained in most societies. So it’s natural for employees, even at the highest levels, to occasionally hold back opinions and feelings that they fear might contradict or irritate the boss...

So what can you do to reduce executive isolation?

...get out of the bubble. All senior leaders are surrounded by physical or virtual trappings of office — the formal decor, the board dinners, the financial reports, the assistants that manage travel and scheduling, the intensive calendar that leaves little time for reflection. To break through the isolation, you need to periodically escape... For example, when Xerox was undergoing its turnaround under Anne Mulcahy, in the early 2000s, each member of the senior team took responsibility for a small portfolio of key customers. This forced them to go meet these customers and hear how they felt about the company. Fidelity used to require all senior people to spend time fielding calls on their customer service line, which gave them direct contact with customers.

Executives can institute skip-level meetings, where they talk with lower-level teams (without their bosses being present) about business conditions, customer reactions, and how to implement strategies. They also can conduct town halls, where employees ask questions and engage in conversations. Creating these listening posts gives executives unfiltered data to factor into their decision making.

Finally, tell your senior team to push back when they disagree and to challenge your thinking. Make sure that you have team members who have the courage to speak up and can be critics. This is easier for some people than for others, so you should actively recruit or promote at least two or three people who will serve as important counterpoints. You need to have the strength of ego to let them challenge you, both privately and during team meetings, and to really listen to their ideas. It won’t always be easy, and sometimes you may need a coach to help you with this process.

Ron Ashkenas

"How to Overcome Executive Isolation" Harvard Business Review. February 2, 2017

a willing sacrifice or simply suffering

In 2009, two US professors set out to study zookeepers and aquarium workers in an effort to discover what kept them motivated at work.

The results pointed to an overwhelming similarity: The keepers gained a deep sense of meaning from their jobs. It didn’t matter that caring for animals was extremely badly paid and offered little career advancement, or that many of the actual tasks involved could be classified as “dirty work”—cleaning up feces, chopping vegetables, scrubbing floors. The zookeepers, most of whom were highly educated, felt that they were fulfilling a calling, and in doing so were extremely dedicated, often volunteering for months before even beginning to be paid, and rarely quitting....

The difference between finding a situation bearable—possibly, indeed, happy—and unbearable is about whether we experience ourselves as performing a willing sacrifice, or simply as suffering. When working hard tips over into working too hard, or with too little reward, sacrifice has slipped into suffering.... “Sacrifice might be hurtful and exhausting, but it is a conscious choice,” (Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD) writes. “Suffering is the result of feeling that we cannot slow down or else we will be shamed and lose control. Sacrifice makes us who we are. Suffering keeps us captive.”

The zookeepers in the 2009 research saw themselves as performing a willing sacrifice—of high pay, or status, or a warm office to work in rather than a pen. They experienced those things, but didn’t seem to resent their work, because they believed the tradeoff was worthwhile.

Cassie Werber

"The key to loving your job in the age of burnout." Quartz. April 7, 2019