Stories & Bricks - Winning Won’t Make You Well
The Fulling team has begun a new video lesson! Each week in our staff meetings, we watch a culture & leadership video to aid in our professional and personal development. We are currently watching “Stories and Bricks” from John Delony. Delony was one of the featured speakers at the most recent EntreLeadership Summit and we will be watching the recording of his lesson from the Summit. Follow along each week as we learn how to deal with the bricks in our backpacks.
As Delony reflected on his life, he came to the profound realization that “winning won’t make you well.” Bad things will continue to happen to us and those we love even if we keep “winning” at life. Delony shares that in counseling they call this “the tyranny of accomplishing all of your dreams”.
One of Delony’s dreams is to deeply affirm in others that they are valuable and loved. However, he said that the people he would affirm will not hear or believe him because the stories that have followed and shaped them. These are stories you were born into, told by others, or you told yourself about who you are or who others are. Delony calls these stories “bricks”. “And we all have a backpack full of bricks,” he says. We carry these heavy backpacks around with us everyday, all day. Some of the bricks we carry are trauma. Delony explains the different kinds of trauma we can carry - acute and cumulative. Acute, or “big T”, trauma would be a major event, like the moment you learned your dad had a heart attack. Cumulative, or “little T”, trauma is a smaller event that occurs again and again, like if your mom passed judgement on your clothes everyday before school and subtly shamed your weight. We can image the acute trauma as an entire brick and cumulative trauma as one little pebble for each instance it occurs. Over time those little pebbles add up to be just as heavy as the whole brick.
Delony shares a quote from his friend Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, “Trauma is reexperienced in the present. Not as a story but as my body’s reactions…These bricks are our bodies in the present responding to stories in our past.” He ties all this to why he is sharing this in a business conference, “You cannot lead with any sort of strength, competency, dignity, or respectability if you are not well.” You must deal with the bricks in your backpack to be a good leader. “Our childhood biography becomes our adult biology,” says Delony.
Stay tuned each week to hear more of Delony’s story and how you can deal with the bricks in your backpack.
Food for thought…
Do you find yourself tempted to chase winning, thinking it will solve your problems?
Have you ever experienced “The tyranny of accomplishing all your dreams”?
When you think about the bricks in your backpack, what are some things you could do to lighten your load?