Can you remember that time when you felt gut wrenching grief? The pain was more than emotional; it was physical. You can feel the physical effects inside your body. Your stomach tightened. Your pulse quickened. Your temples throbbed and the wrinkles on your forehead etched deeper.
The feeling can be even deeper. There can be cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual, and philosophical dimensions. The feeling of grief can permeate what feels like every aspect of your life – consuming you. How well can you empathize with that emotion?
Under what circumstances have you felt that sense of loss? A relationship breakup? A pet’s passing? Missing a short putt on the 72nd hole of a PGA tournament? Well, that’s how Jon Rahm felt after losing a tournament by one stroke when he missed a short putt to make a playoff. You could almost see the wrinkles on his forehead etch deeper and deeper.
Welcome to Swimming in the Flood; a podcast where we develop the resilient leader’s mindset by navigating difficult currents in business. My name is Trent Theroux.
Philippe Verduyn wrote in Springer’s Journal of Motivation and Emotion that most people need additional time to grasp the entirety of what happened to them before they can plan to respond. Verduyn writes that some emotions last longer than others. Verduyn studied the daily lives of participants and analyzed their emotions as well as their intensity and average duration.
They found that out of as many as 27 different feelings, grief and sadness last the longest at about 120 hours. It takes on average 120 to begin to process your plan following a loss. This doesn’t count sleeping. It’s waking hours. 120 hours of feeling that punch in the gut? Mike Tyson doesn’t hit that hard. Not that I’m looking to test that theory.
By comparison here are the times felt by other emotions: Guilt – 3.5 hours, Stress – 3 hours, Pride 2.6 hours, Compassion – 1.3 hours. Wait?? Compassion is only 1.3 hours. That means the feeling of loss stays with us almost 100 times longer than feeling badly for someone else. A missed putt on the 18th green stays with you 100 times longer than watching a bus full of nuns careen off a cliff! Something is serious wrong in our mental wiring.
Grief lasts nearly 50 longer than pride. Folks, I’ve been locked up and sentenced for committing the sin of pride too often, but the effects are fleeting compared to that of a loss. Why is it as human do we suffer the emotions of losing significantly more than we bask in the emotions of winning? Have you experienced this? Here is how I thought of it. Last fall, I completed a marathon swim from Montauk, Long Island to Misquamicut, Rhode Island, about 20 miles. At the finish, I was euphoric. Very shortly after, I was enjoying a beer and thinking about why I didn’t complete the English Channel. I attempted the English Channel four years earlier and the devastation of that failure still permeates my mind even at the heights of success.
The philosopher Seneca wrote “It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. The grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever.” Seneca was a Stoic. Stoicism was founded in Athens in the 3rd century B.C. The root of Stoicism thinking is to take obstacles in your life and turn them into your advantage. Well, Mr. Seneca, that sounds easy, but how do we seek advantages when we have 119 more hours of gut punch feeling left to work through. Seneca also wrote, “You act like mortals in all that you fear and like immortals in all that you desire.”
Maybe Seneca is correct, but I can guarantee you that he never stood over an 8-foot putt with a sharp break down to the right to put yourself in a PGA playoff.
I am now going to give you my unscientific, non-peer reviewed, resilient leader theory on vanquishing grief. Are you ready? Got your pencils out? Here’s it is. Practice Starts Monday. You heard it. Practice Starts Monday.
Jon Rahm is the number one ranked golfer in the world. He won the 2023 Masters Championship, the 2023 Genesis Invitational Championship and the 2023 American Express champion. He won more money playing golf in a season than any other golfer in history. And his total is only through the first of May!
PGA golfer Max Homa likened Rahm to Thanos, from the Avengers. Homa said, “Rahm is probably Thanos. He has a lot of the stones in his toolbox. He’s a tremendous golfer. He has zero weaknesses.”
On this fateful Sunday at the Mexico Open, Rahm shot a very respectable four under par. Unfortunately for Rahm, Tony Finau bested his round by two shots. After the round, Rahm reported, “It was a day where I didn’t do much wrong, but I didn’t do much right either”
At his press conference, Rahm was asked, “Even as someone who’s the number one golfer on the Tour and has won so much out there, how valuable is it to have the experience of continuously being in the hunt on Sundays?” Rahm, replied, “It’s a great reminder that what you’ve done means absolutely nothing; you still have to go out there and do it again.” Whoa, this is a meaningful comment from someone less than twenty minutes away from losing a golf tournament.
Rahm continued, It’s also good so you don’t think too much of yourself, right? I wanted to win, but it’s a reminder that everybody on Tour is a great player. It’s a great reminder of what I still need to do to be able to keep winning tournaments. It’s a blessing in life to know that the work is not really done. It’s never done; the search is ever ongoing. I will continue my search on the range tomorrow.”
There you have it folks. The greatest golfer in the world acknowledges that the work is never done. Practice Starts Monday. You can bet that Rahm will be on the range working out some of the demons that cost him two shots over the course of four days to give him an edge for the next event.
Another Stoic and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have the power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” These Stoics know a few things. Rahm accepted that Tony Finau had a great day and beat him while shooting a round of four under. That’s mental toughness. Me, I couldn’t shoot four under in a golf video game and I might throw the controller if I missed the eight foot putt.
Friends, there is one thing I can tell you. One thing I have learned from my fifty plus years of failures. The path to improvement is long and endless. Practice starts Monday. We will all experience failures and we will wallow in those failures. The best of us can accept that pain, compartmentalize that pain and show up the next day to start again. Realize this and you will find strength.
Folks, thank you for listening to Swimming in the Flood. Resilient leaders face challenging currents, and it is tough navigating, but with one tack or another we can get there together.