When bravery outruns capacity?

About 3 months ago a friend said to me “Jesus Scotty, you are pure 100% grit aren’t you?”

Turns out, I've come to learn that this, in fact, might not be the badge of honour I have always believed it was.

Brene Brown has said “that we are wired for struggle” and I believe that some of us actively look for struggles because we believe it's how life should be. It was either taught to us; “Life wasn't meant to be easy son”, or learned by us from our own experiences.

But just how much struggle is appropriate and how much do we subconsciously or consciously bring struggle into our lives to complete the story we tell ourselves about who we are and how our life goes?

This would appear to be the big question that has emerged for me at this specific point in time.

How deep must we dig or how deep are we choosing to dig? Is it a choice or is it a necessity?

I know for me, this crisis swept me up into a frenzy of helping and being of service to others. I somehow believed that the world needed people of my “grit”, my determination and fight to take action, for others. I have learned that this initial burst was completely subconscious and since I have found resolution that this is in fact who I want to be in the world, but let me assure you it has a cost.

For me this last 5 months has provided a “next level” requirement of depth, one full of psychological triggers to resolve the world as I believe it should be. My incessant demands for leadership (in case you haven't noticed), as it turns out, isn't all about the now, but often about the resolution of my past experiences. I want no person to unnecessarily suffer because I believe I understand what suffering is.

What I want to share with you is the suffering that I have caused myself in my beliefs that bravery has no cost, but it most certainly does.

I think the depth to which we dig is driven by what we truly believe to be “on the line” for us and more specifically, what is required of us personally; believe being the key word here.

I’m a strategist, by reputation and importantly by nature. I didn't thumb through the career guidebook to get here. I learned my capability for vigilance, foresight and the always-on scanning of opportunities, threats and necessary mitigations and interventions.

This on its own is fine, but when charged with the belief of what I MUST do in the face of suffering I have not once afforded myself the luxury or as I would unkindly say the “delusion” of blind hope. This has exhausted me mentally and emotionally and this is what I would like to share with others.

Importantly I am a long way from alone here, I have met and have always been very attracted to “People of Grit”, the “Bungee Jumpers of Uncertainty”, who dare to be brave, and to leap, but it does not mean they do not scream in terror through at least part of that fall.

Throwing caution to the wind and having complete “faith in the universe” is an attractive proposition, but not a naturally occurring one for me or many others. 

For me and for most of you reading this, we have not battled for food, shelter or safety, our challenges have almost always been a bi-product of our lofty expectations, passionate desires and determined resolve to change the course for that which we believed was intended for us, our inherited or interpreted baseplate for being, most of us not capable of knowing which one is true. 

Notably, all of challenge is relative, there are many people doing it super tough right now, by all known definitions, particularly in Melbourne, but fear, pain and challenge is relative. It is driven by the gap between our expectations and our current experience, a gap that has widened in either reality, emotion or core belief over the past five months, dependent upon how change has both entered our lives and been interpreted in our own minds.

For me, it has been both an experience and a trial, where I have dug deeper only to find wave after wave of unresolved “matter” that has had to be fought or surrendered to. The deeper I have dug, the more I have found the brokenness of past experience, all of which have layered counter attack after counter attack upon my resolve.

When we feel attacked, under threat or powerless, our resolve and our deeply held beliefs are called upon to help us construct a response. It’s like calling for backup in the battlefield of our minds, it's just that some of us struggle with surrender more than others.

Powerlessness of course, in and of itself, is not a new experience for any of us, but it's one we may not have felt since we were small children, a time when we last felt reliant and dependent on the ability of others for our safety and survival, our basic needs and our core desire for attachment. The experience is what I called “Psychosocial Regression” in my webinar on April 7th. This webinar was my attempt to offer certainty and guidance. I outlined the plausible response to people experiencing powerlessness and the lack of recent familiarity with that feeling as a way of helping leaders navigate the road ahead.

I find it amusing now (although at times it felt harrowing) that I, in fact, proved that theory right in what I have experienced this past 5 months. The struggle is very real, well at least it felt that way to me.

What I feel compelled to share is that I have found that my grit, determination and courage have been both a blessing and an incredible burden, a curse of cruelty to self, even if occurring for the noblest of causes.

This lesson is one I wanted to share with you. My capacity for self love, self kindness are 1000% critical to my mentally surviving my choices at this time and accepting that these are in fact my choices. Those of us that “get going, when the going gets tough” need support from ourselves firstly and from those around us so the wheels don’t completely come off.

So, mindful that so many people are suffering right now, be it based on economics, homeschooling, isolation or loneliness, that two things must be present; reminding ourselves to be grateful for what we have and for us to offer connection and empathy to others.

Remember that bravery and struggle can only exceed our capacity when we fail to offer or accept empathy and love for ourselves. If we want to make a real difference, we must offer this to ourselves first. Lastly, the healing from connection itself is so vital to ensuring that we do not “outbrave ourselves” and that we must do our best to ensure that others are not left to grit this out alone.

I’d like to finish by offering my gratitude, to my team, our clients, colleagues and friends, recognising that I myself have even found it difficult to work with me this past 5 months.

I hope this is helpful.

Scott