Conclusion
Reconnecting Passion to Purpose
One more step in the journey of discovering where your deep joy meets the world’s deep needs.
THOM MAYER1
Moving from “How” to “Yes”: Your Deep Joy Is the Compass
Had enough with the “hows”? As conveyed in the title to Peter Block’s intriguing and thought-provoking book, “The Answer to How Is Yes.”2 My experience in dealing with hospitals and healthcare systems beginning their journey to battle burnout is that they nearly always say, “Yes, but how?” Again, Block: “The question ‘How’ more than any other question looks for the answer outside of us. It is an indirect expression of our doubts.”2
“Yes, but how?” is unintentionally a deflection from the necessity of action and a diversion from the certainty of continuing on the same path—the same path that generated the burnout epidemic. I understand this thinking, but choosing to battle healthcare burnout is a choice for change, for adventure. And adventure, exploring new territory, is always a choice for courage.
We have it within us to change the world for ourselves and others. (Lead ourselves, lead our teams.) We don’t need a map, but we do need a compass. The compass is within us. (The work begins within.) What is the compass, the tool to keep track of “True North,” as Stephen Covey called it?3 Even the briefest of reflection will tell you, it is your “deep joy.” Or more specifically, where your deep joy intersects the world’s deep needs, as I discussed in Chapter 8. That is the compass for your courageous journey to make a difference through leadership. Pursue what is in your heart and you will be following True North. Without your deep joy, you have no fuel for the journey. With it, you cannot be stopped.
I have a secret to tell you—one I should have told you much sooner: not everyone has the same deep joy as you do. This is an important realization, since the deeper the joy, the deeper the passion it engenders, and the deeper we seek to have others bathe in those healing waters. Everyone must discover it for themselves, but you can help them in their journey to discovery. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats captured this in his wonderful line, “There is some One Myth for every man, which if we but knew it would make us understand all that he did and thought.”4 The difficulty is that many of us do not understand our One Myth, which makes it exponentially harder to uncover in others.
Trade the Certainty of Safety for the Uncertainty of Adventure
To change culture, hardwire flow and fulfillment, and reignite our passion, we must exchange what we know how to do for what matters—your deep joy, which is the exchange of certainty for adventure.
It may be disquieting to hear, but the answer is inside ourselves. In accepting this simple wisdom and acting on it, you will, in ways small and large, create a world that will solve for others what you have struggled with yourself. Do not let the struggle dissuade you—if it weren’t a struggle, it wouldn’t be fun, it wouldn’t be change, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
You already know—and care—a lot or you would never have picked up a book titled Battling Healthcare Burnout. If you did not have both a depth of knowledge and a considerable experiential base, “battling burnout” wouldn’t even be understandable, much less intriguing. We want change, and a safe and predictable pathway to it. There is no such safe and predictable path, except that of following the deep joy within us. We are capable, we know our work as well as anyone, and we care for ourselves, our teams, and our patients with a fire unsurpassed by anyone—and matched by precious few. That must be enough … and it will be.
Finding the Fuel for Courage
If you need a dose of inspiration to fuel your courage as much as your passion fuels you, consider these words from former president Theodore Roosevelt, delivered at the Sorbonne on April 23, 1910, at precisely 3 p.m. It is known as “The Man in the Arena” speech, although the full address, which was several hours long, was titled “Citizenship in a Republic.” Having read it many times, I can say with certainty that these are the only truly memorable lines in the entire essay:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.5
While there will be some inevitable failures in battling healthcare burnout, count us among those who choose while “daring greatly” and spending ourselves in a worthy cause to never be “timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
From Courage to Crazy
In a way that can scarcely be understood in the internet age of information doubling every 12 months, it is difficult to imagine the 1950s and the explosion of theories in physics, the concepts of which were transforming the world.6 The work of physicists in the 1940s had led to harnessing the power of the atom—and atomic bombs being exploded at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II. The most exciting developments in science at the time were in physics.
In the summer of 1958, a conference was held at Columbia University where the best minds in theoretical physics presented their cutting-edge work. Wolfgang Pauli, fresh off developing a unified field theory, was invited to discuss his work. After he completed a presentation that was universally described as clear, succinct, and persuasive, multiple discussants took the stage. Finally, one of the greatest physicists of the time, Niels Bohr, was asked to give his closing comments. All eyes were on him, to hear his sage and gimlet-eyed wisdom. Bohr said, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct?”7
My question is, “Are your ideas crazy enough, fueled by your courage and your deep joy, to finally change your culture, your system, and yourself?”
I certainly hope they are. If not, “go get crazy.”
Are You Up to the Sisyphean Task?
In the lee of the storm of the coronavirus pandemic, many referred to the struggle as “Sisyphean,” evoking the ancient myth of Sisyphus, condemned to endlessly roll a huge stone to the top of a hill, only to see it roll back to the bottom, where the effort began anew, throughout eternity.8–9 Having read all these missives, and with the greatest respect for all of the authors who use this classic literary allusion, I ask, Isn’t that the task to which we all attached our passion—to sublimate our efforts selflessly and happily for the good of others? All of us recall Hippocrates’s wisdom, “First do no harm” (Primum non nocere). But fewer recall the next line: “Then do some good” (Deinde benefacere).10 Be bold, be brave, then do some good. And it is wise to recall the last line of Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”11
Let us imagine ourselves equally happy, understanding as Camus did that “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”11
The Star Thrower
You and your team are involved in one of the greatest endeavors one could hope for: caring for patients and families in need. It is an honored and honorable calling of which all of us should be proud. How can we communicate how much we honor each other? I have found this story to be highly effective. On the surface, it’s a hokey story, yet it appeals to the passions and deep joys of your team. It was inspired by a short essay by the incomparable scientist and philosopher Loren Eiseley, “The Star Thrower of Costabel.”12 Here is how I tell it:
In the Nation’s Capital Area, many people choose to take their summer vacations at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the barrier islands off the coast, which extend well off the shore into the Atlantic Ocean and are connected by bridges and ferries. The story is told that a businessman took his family to the Outer Banks, where the houses are on the beach but are built on pylons, or “stilts,” so that when the tides surge and the waves smash against them, the houses won’t be torn down by nature’s force. He checked in for the week on a Saturday afternoon, bright and sunny and perfect for a vacation. That night a massive storm howled in off the Atlantic, with driving rain and waves crashing against the pylons. But as you may have experienced, despite the violence of the storm, it had the odd effect of helping the businessman sleep very well.
The next morning, as usual, he awoke early, to find that the sky was crystal clear and the ocean was perfectly flat. But the tidal surge had the curious effect of washing what appeared to be every starfish in the sea onto the beaches of the Outer Banks. In fact, it appeared that starfish had rained down, covering the beach as far as he could see. As he walked down to the beach, he looked to the left and to the right and only saw one person on the beach, to his left, and he walked that way. As he did so, he became curious, as the person on the beach repeatedly, rhythmically bent over, paused, and then stood back up. As he walked farther in that direction, he became even more curious, because he realized it was a young girl, about nine years old, all alone. As he got closer, he realized she was picking up starfish, one by one, cleaning them off one by one, and throwing them back into the ocean.
As he reached the young girl, the businessman said, “Little girl, I couldn’t help noticing what you are doing as I walked toward you. As noble as it is, I’m sorry to tell you this, but what you are doing can’t possibly make a difference. I’ve been watching you for the last 15 minutes and you’ve only been able to clear this one small area about seven feet around.” He continued, “There are thousands of starfish on this beach and many thousands more we can’t see,” sweeping his arm to show her. “So, I am sorry to tell you this, but what you are doing can’t possibly make any difference.”
Looking down at the starfish in her hand, the little girl said, “It does to this one,” as she threw the starfish back into the waves.
Well, as I said, it’s a hokey story. But that’s what you do, isn’t it? Every time you take care of a patient, every time you come to work, every time you help out one of your team members, you make a difference in people’s lives—you throw the starfish back into the sea.
If you have children, ask them what they want to do with their lives, and, regardless of their age, they will tell you, “I want to make a difference in people’s lives.” There is a word for those who work hard for others, who strive constantly, not for themselves but for others, often against seemingly impossible odds, all for the good of others. It is hero.
Here is my question to you: When you work at your hospital or in your healthcare system, regardless of your job description, do you feel like a hero?
You should, because if you are not a hero, who is? You take care of people who can’t, won’t, or don’t take care of themselves. You take care of people who, through the ravages of time, disease, anguish, alcohol, drugs, and even, tragically, their own families, have lost their dignity—and you give it back to them. You do it with style, grace, dignity, and equanimity—and you do it person by person, day by day, week by week, year in, year out—and you don’t do it for yourself; you do it for others.
If you are not a hero, who is?
The next time your head hits the pillow, take the time to smile and say to yourself, “I am a hero—I make a difference in people’s lives.”
Because you are—and I am very proud to be one of you.1
Begin the work within.
Be at peace.
Show courage.
You are a hero.
You make a difference.
And that is your deep joy.