resiliency

Over the past decade, the pace of change and the growing complexity of the business environment has increased dramatically. Leaders often find themselves overworked and overwhelmed in response to these challenges. Building up their resilience is an essential skill set. Resilient leaders are able to manage personal and organizational anxiety effectively and exude calm and confidence.

Irvine Nugent, Sonos Leadership
"13 Leadership Skills You Didn't Need A Decade Ago That Are Now Essential." Forbes. December 13, 2016

the frogs and the jackdaws

Thank goodness we don't understand the language of ravens, jackdaws, crickets, frogs, and pigs. Otherwise we'd probably worry about what they think too. Yet how many people seem more brainless than the frogs and the jackdaws? Does that make any difference to us? No. We let what they say upset us and render our lives utterly miserable.

Dio Chrysostom (ca. 40–ca. 120) 

His Meditations, ~200 BC

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