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Georgia-based B2B copywriter, blogger, podcaster and coach, Ed Gandia, has produced some great marketing materials during the past  decade or so in which I have followed him. I “met” him by reading the influential book, The Wealthy Freelancer (that Ed co-wrote with my former coach, Steve Slaunwhite), and through their shared work in the “International Freelancers’ Academy.

Ed finds as much fascination in issues of entrepreneurial well-being as I do, and he regularly shares his research and insights on it.

Recently, I listened to a program he published on the importance of setting and keeping our own mental boundaries, as solo professionals, so that work does not take over all the time (and then some!) that we have. Ed cites “Parkinson’s Law,” that “work will expand to take up all available time,” if we let it. And nothing good follows.

For instance, if we make a habit of working on weekends, and don’t respect our own need for rest and to be with families and friends, we break the limits that we set for ourselves, leaving us prone to exhaustion and burn-out.  Our families express their disappointment and anger (or, if they’re children, they act out).

There’s nothing new to this observation, as psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and other mental health specialists wrote about “boundary violations” at least three decades ago. But Ed’s program caused me to pause because he describes how negotiating our own inner boundaries can be challenging, specifically because we are subject to both false guilt (FG) and true guilt (TG). Both forms of guilt can dog the outcome when we break our own boundaries.

True guilt (TG), Ed observes, results when we make mistakes or blunders that show that we lack internal integrity. For instance, we double-book meetings by mistake. Or we “mess up” by submitting work that was not our best, due to time constraints. TG makes us resolve the problem or fault the best we can by making amends (especially trying to learn from the mistake, so as not to repeat it), forgiving ourselves and moving on. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but it is finite in duration.

False guilt (FG), by contrast, is a learned response, triggered by a demand outside of ourselves that we could not or did not meet. This kind of guilt is unreasonable (i.e. you cannot reason with it, logically). It is also inappropriate (the guilt persists, unfairly) and unhealthy. FG makes us feel terrible and like a record stuck in a groove, causes us to blame and berate ourselves (e.g. constantly saying what we “should” do or have done). Ed calls this “should-ing all over ourselves!” There are no options available when one has FG, because you feel guilty in either case, and that is key to its destructive power.

The reason I mention Ed’s distinction between these forms of guilt (that date back to early writings of psychoanalysis) is that anyone who works creatively must be especially vigilant about FG. It leaves our minds stuck, like the proverbial needle in the groove of a record, so we feel there are “no other options available.” When you continue to feel guilty, despite having already apologized to anyone else involved, you have a problem.

Ed reminds us that when we feel FG, we override our internal boundaries, protecting others’ feelings and needs, to a pathological extent, above our own. In simple terms, we allow a client who calls in a rush order on 3:00 pm on Friday, due the following Tuesday, because, well, they’re a repeat client and we can cancel our planned outing with the kids. (Obviously, worse suffering and loss will ensue from decisions made in FG.) 

While TG is a necessary experience when we fall short, learn and grow from our failures, FG can overwhelm us with self-abuse that never goes anywhere positive. Whether we call our internal needs and commitments “boundaries” or not, Ed’s observation that they are often tied to our guilt reflect how genuine they are and that they warrant our respect.

And now it’s your turn. If you analyze your behaviour at work and at home, where do you find true and false guilt arising? How do they help or hinder your internal boundaries? And what effect does each have on your business and life?

(A posting on entrepreneurial well-being, first published on January 4, 2018)

Entrepreneurs tend to deal with the greatest heights and depths of emotional experience—dizzying elation when a contract succeeds and equally deep depression when it does not.

Throughout the past Christmas holiday season,  I first read about meditation, mindfulness and suffering—concepts that affect our minds and the creative work that we as entrepreneurs do. As that year recently ended and a new one was ushered in, I noticed my mental temptation to ruminate—what the Concise Oxford English Dictionary refers to as the process of “thinking deeply about something.”

But in a context of meditation and mindfulness, “rumination” takes on a more troubling meaning, such as nursing obsessive worries and getting lost in depressive and anxious thoughts that greatly undermine one’s contentment or peace. Rumination can cause terrible emotional (and then creative) blocks, as we set forth to launch new services, or when we start new projects or conclude old ones. Can you think of times when you faced these kinds of emotional blocks and how much you suffered from them?

In her pioneering 2011 study, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, American psychologist Kristin Neff says that suffering occurs when reality does not match what we want. Given that such discordance is a common (almost daily) reality, we all suffer to some extent. It is part of being human. Neff cites her Chinese Buddhist mentor, Shinzen Young, however, who asserts that “suffering = pain x resistance.” We all suffer, but we can make our suffering more manageable if we do not resist the pain beneath it. Feel the pain, Neff writes; know what it’s about; and it will dissipate.

“The suffering doesn’t go away,” as local radio host Heather Morrison recently said, in the context of pandemic life. “But you feel better equipped to manage it.”

While contemplating this insight back in 2017, I happened also to read a meditation by the Buddhist monk, Bodhipaksa (over the Wildmind LLC meditation website). He stresses that when we suffer, one way that we resist pain is to ruminate on our circumstances, thinking, for instance, that “‘I’m worried about this, I don’t like that, No one cares about me or considers my feelings,’” and so on. Rumination allows our individual “thinking . . .  to amplify our suffering,” Bodhipaksa says.

Instead, if we can find compassion for ourselves (what Neff centres her work on), that self-compassion allows us to see ourselves as part of a greater community of others.

“‘I’ thoughts reinforce our sense of aloneness. We see ourselves as broken, as worse than others and therefore separate from [others],” Bodhipaksa says. By contrast, when we offer ourselves compassion (by a process of meditation or self-talk) we see that our “individual sufferings are . . . .  shared by others and [are] part of the difficulties we all have in being human.” “We thinking” connects us to others and enables us to view our individual sufferings as “part of the difficulties we all have in being human” he writes.

Neff’s theories of self-compassion argue that it can be cultivated and consists of “kindness meeting suffering,” that we offer to ourselves, and then can extend to others.

Fourteen months since the Covid-19 pandemic began, do you find yourself ruminating on (not just considering) your life and work?

If we cultivate self-compassion when we feel pain (instead of resisting the pain that only amplifies our suffering), our self-focused rumination will give way to calm, “decreasing our tendency to freak out, and increasing our happiness” (Bodhipaksa).

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In the March 2021 issue of the  online magazine, “Psyche,” doctoral student in clinical psychology, Christina Chwyl, took up the topic of self-compassion, arguing that it “is not self-indulgence.”

Most of us are raised to share, cooperate and play fairly. And “yet many of us receive no guidance on how to be a friend to ourselves,” she writes. “We think that compassion for ourselves is counterproductive, self-indulgent, lazy or weak. As though we deal with life’s disappointments,” as Chwyl says, by “sitting on the couch and eat[ing] Ben and Jerry’s all day.”

Self-compassion, on the contrary, “gives us strategies to manage our emotions, such as seeking support from others” instead of blaming ourselves or distracting ourselves from our unaddressed resistance to suffering.

When we practice more self-compassion, we find it easier to improve ourselves by learning from our mistakes. We can admit our mistakes to ourselves without criticizing ourselves punitively for them.

Self-compassion is, Chwyl writes, “a healthy response to suffering.” When we practice it, we are better able to “take personal responsibility for transgressions and persist following obstacles” that otherwise would halt us in our tracks. Entrepreneurial and other failures become opportunities for learning and growth.

And “contrary to assumptions that self-compassion is selfish, self-compassion even helps us to be kinder toward others.” We can become “more resilient versions of ourselves.”

She writes that when our egos whisper to ourselves in self-talk to “achieve more, do better, and you will be worthy,” self-compassion is the reliable, old friend whom we deserve and who says, “I believe in you, I’m here for you, no matter what.”

Do these insights on self-compassion resonate with you? How do you offer yourself compassion, in these late, pandemic days?

 More than a year since the Covid-19 pandemic began, folk from all walks of life are feeling exhausted.

In a recent feature for CBC’s “Saskatoon Morning” radio program, producer Heather Morrison likened our discomfort to the mental rigours of marathon running.

When the world first recognized the pandemic in 2020, health officials quickly reminded us that “This is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.” The major difference, Morrison says, is that endurance races are done by choice. We can’t opt-out of Covid-19. However, we can learn from those who have trained their minds and bodies through the periods of deprivation and loss that come with

running marathons.

Morrison grounds her reflection in the reality that she is currently training (for the first time) to do the upcoming Saskatchewan marathon, a full 42.2 kilometre race.  Marathons, she observed in her story, are less about training one’s body and more about one’s mind. The kind of mental training athletes undergo is equally needed (by all of us) to cope with late pandemic days. 

When we deal with social isolation, she suggests, we need to focus on moving forward, despite not being able to see a “finish line.” When you run, you need to focus on “what you cannot see.”  

In knowing that there is a finishing line ahead, we find the motivation to keep moving forward.

Morrison interviewed Terrant Cross Child, a Blackfoot member of the Blood Tribe from Southern Alberta, who regularly runs marathons. When you start, he observes, you can’t see the finish line, but must focus on reaching it. Aimless effort won’t work.

 Cross Child says that runners have

to endure both the bad and the good, along with the knowledge that “the prize [of finishing] lies ahead.” 

Just as runners’ aid stations offer first aid, water and energy gel to help athletes on their races, Cross Child says that we can cope with isolation by remembering conversations and times shared with loved ones, such as spouses, children and friends.

He and other marathoners, Morrison says, are “models of perseverance.” Their capacity, as Cross Child says, to “keep their eyes on the prize” ultimately overpowers the agonizing wish to quit. 

Ultra-marathons, the equivalent of four marathons, can last as long as 22 hours (160 km) and require athletes to run “through the pitch black of night.” Morrison interviewed Stacy Dittmer (of Brandon, MB) who has run many of these and found them doable only “by segmenting the challenge into manageable pieces.”

Dittmer thinks only about the next 40 steps, not the overwhelming hundred kilometres left to go. It’s “one foot in front of another” and “one aid station to the next.”  

Quitting, she says, is not an option. And negative thoughts need to be excluded to keep a healthy mindset. 

Morrison says that endurance training is “not about being so fit you do not suffer, but about changing the way you feel that suffering. The suffering does not go away. But you feel better equipped to manage it.”

However, we can’t anticipate every turn in the road:  sometimes we cannot prepare our minds or something unexpected occurs, so that we can easily feel overwhelmed. We might feel we have little energy or suffer muscle cramps and so on. Sometimes, Dittmer says, we simply have to “hang on.” The lows always pass. “The further you go on, they go away . . . . If you can just stick with it, you’re going to feel good again.”

Morrison’s story concludes that Dittmer believes gratitude is essential to cultivating a healthy mindset. During an ultramarathon, she runs on a “dark trail” all night long, so that the sight of first light becomes the object of deep gratitude. Her race is not finished, but “she’s grateful for having made it through the night.”

That image completes the analogy: with gratitude, Morrison says, we get through the pandemic, “from one sunrise until the next; until we hit the finish line.” 

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Late stage, world altering pandemics, like gruelling ultra-marathons, can and do grind us down (consider historical accounts of the Spanish Flu).  Pandemics (and marathons) do so by forcing us to confront our own mortality, our own rationale and faith for living.

This may be why these lines from Rabindranath Tagore always cause me to reflect on the marginal spaces we occupy–some of us more intensely now than ever before:

“Death is not the extinguishing of light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” 

And now it’s your turn: do you find the analogy between marathon running and pandemic life helpful? Please tell me on my “comments” page what thoughtful supports you are finding. I’d  be delighted to hear from you.