We’re officially into the year and I’m feeling myself settle into my new routines and goals. I recorded a wonderful podcast episode this week (coming soon). I also completed my second full week of living up to the morning rituals I’ve always wanted:
- Breathwork
- Stretching and mobility
- Prayer and a blessing
- Journaling
- Setting my tasks for the day
As I’ve lived into my long-held intent, I’ve noticed how present I am when I emerge from my office to say good morning to my family and help our oldest get out the door to preschool. I’ve noticed how much more content I am with myself, no matter how the day goes.
I don’t believe there is any one way to experience contentment in life. I offer this reflection for you to make your own meaning from it as we enter week three of this year, the time when our intentions, habits, and goals often fade as our old patterns emerge.
May this year represent a new experience for you. One of living into your intentions consistently over time. Beginning again with today.
A quote to make you think from a book worth reading
“What I found is that love is the answer in the inner world, just as it is in the outer world. Listening to, embracing, and loving parts allows them to heal and transform as much as it does for people.
[…] If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even for the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we an do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we hate or disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them.”
- Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts
…
Broken people are broken leaders. Broken leaders create pain for everyone they are responsible for. This is what we too often expect from work — brokenness.
I’ve never met a person who was not at one time or another broken. Broken by heartbreak. Broken by unmet needs. Broken by neglect. Broken by illness or abuse or poverty.
There is no shame in being broken. I have been broken. The way I have slowly, but surely become unbroken and capable of living a more whole life is by getting help. From my wife and family. From therapy (couples and individual). From my coach. From books. From my friends.
It has taken a village to help me repair the wounds of my past. But my most important breakthroughs came when I began a therapy modality called Internal Family Systems, or IFS.
This book is the primer on IFS and I would recommend it for any adult human, but especially any adult human who wants to lead well. Leading well starts by becoming more fully ourselves. And that begins with acknowledging our brokenness.
Three links to encourage deep thought and breakthrough growth
Let me admit something up front: you show me a listicle article title, and I’ll show you a link I won’t click. Listicles have a lame name because they are often lame and not useful. And yet, as I looked through my reading list from the past couple of weeks in Matter (a very rare new addition to the apps I use regularly) what did I find? Three listicles that contain a year’s worth of wisdom and advice from publications and thinkers I trust.
So, despite my heavy bias against the format, I’m rolling with it this week in a mildly thematic link list for you:
1 The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2023
“The cold hard truth about working in scaling companies is that people, and in most cases, top performers, are going to leave. The question for managers shouldn’t be how to prevent this natural growing pain from happening, rather the focus should shift to: What are you doing to prepare for it?”
First Round Review is consistently one of the best publications on the web for founders and operators. Reading this list gives you the highlights of the entire year’s worth of content from them. Read it, then dive deeper on the advice that’s most relevant for you.
2 Favorite Books of 2023 by Maria Popova
“To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night.”
Too many reading lists published at the end of the year are a myopic reflection of the author’s bubble they live in. They consist of books written by the most common popular podcast guests, driven by a desire not to miss out on what everyone else is reading. Or, worse, they’re simply a list of every book the author read that year.
I look to people who read widely and in quantity to trust for recommendations to help me continue to grow and learn. In particular, I’m interested in expanding the genres and topics I read about in order to find new ideas and principles that apply to my own life and work. Maria provides a jumping off point for a more varied reading shelf in the year ahead.
3 24 Highlights from The Tim Ferriss Show to Make You Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise in 2024
“The clips below cover a wide range of topics—the very tactical and practical (exercise routines, optimizing to-do lists, building habits, goal setting), life-transforming decisions and big-picture moves (rites of passage, personal reinvention), and much more.”
It’s easy to take Tim for granted because he’s been in the game so long (10 years!) or because you dismissed him long ago due to a book title or some other long forgotten reason. But show me a podcast with a higher quality of guest roster and more consistent output this past decade… there aren’t many.
So sticking with our theme, here is a curated collection of relatively short clips that allow you to get the very best of an entire year of one of the most useful podcasts in the world.
Bonus: Nick Saban on Second Chances
Look, I’m a University of Georgia graduate. I grew up on college football. I continue to watch college football despite my massive qualms with the risk of head injuries in the sport. It’s one of those value conflicts that I’m not able to explain or justify. It just is what it is. I love the game and I love UGA.
The primary person who has made it miserable to root for UGA for my entire adult life: Nick Saban. Yet, when I heard about his retirement earlier this week, I found myself surprisingly sad. This clip of him at a news conference talking about grace, forgiveness, and learning is a perfect example of why.
People who can sustain principled leadership for long periods of time are rare. Nick Saban is one of the best leaders sports has ever seen. Consider this a salute to an incredible career and a great leader.
An idea sparked by my client work to help you lead better
This past summer I experienced an ending that broke my heart but was also beautiful. We lost our black lab Hank to cancer. We held a peaceful and intentional ceremony in our back yard before a skilled veterinarian allowed him to rest his tired body and pass away peacefully.
It was the first time I was able to fully grieve and celebrate an ending as it happened (again, thanks to therapy and coaching). We cooked Hank a beautiful last meal. We bathed him and dressed him in a new bandana. We told him the difference he had made in our lives. We held him close as he passed into his permanent sleep.
I cried for hours. I laid in the spot where he had lain in my lap and cried. I cried in the shower. I cried with my wife and boys. That weekend we bought a statue of a lab puppy and put it in our garden next to the spot where he left us. The entire experience was one long ritual in honoring his life and acknowledging his passing.
Too often in working with founders, I see them twisting themselves in knots to avoid an ending that needs to happen. But an important part of leadership is the acknowledgement, grief, and acceptance of necessary endings.
You will experience endings as a founder or creator. Your best employee will one day outgrow working for you. Your company might one day shut down. You may move to a new city and end your time in your currently beloved hometown. Or you may face the deeper and more challenging endings brought on by death, divorce, or illness.
These are uncomfortable truths. And far too often we void them to protect ourselves from feeling the sadness, anger, grief, and loss we need to feel in order to move forward as whole as we’re able.
Unprocessed endings live in our bodies. They create barriers to connection in our relationships. They come out as anxiety and frustration. They are reflected in our coping mechanisms of drinking, drugs, sex, shopping and workaholism.
By contrast, conscious endings can be beautiful. They can be meaningful. They can allow us to honor and respect the fullness of the experience or relationship. They can be as meaningful as sending our dog Hank to heaven.
As leaders it is not only our job to create optimistic vision for the future, but also to actively name when an ending is at hand. It is our job to help our teams process endings in healthy ways, by fully grieving and integrating the loss.
What is ending, has ended, or needs to end in your life right now? Have you acknowledged it? Have you cried about it? How might this unacknowledged ending be quietly holding you back from the potential on the other side? What ritual might help you process the ending? From whom do you need support in order to know you will be ok after this ending has passed?
As always, I welcome and enjoy your replies. Having such a thoughtful, kind, and intelligent audience is my favorite part of making things on the internet.
Much love and respect,
PS: Do you know a mission-driven creator or founder looking for a high impact coach? Is that you? I’m always taking great referrals. Please intro us by email or send them to barrettbrooks.com/coaching to learn more and fill out a short questionnaire to explore working together.
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