It was a rainy and cool Monday morning at the posh resort outside of Phoenix, Arizona. I walked to the opening session of an industry conference attended by approximately 30 men. I was to speak in the afternoon about the self-managed work teams I had implemented in my company.

As I sat through the morning presentations, I felt more and more upset. Fear and pain forced themselves from the depths of me into my consciousness. My mind struggled mightily to change how I felt. I tried desperately to will the awful feelings and their message away. They would not be denied. Over the lunch hour I could deny the power of my emotions no longer. The anxiety overwhelmed me. I could not stay. I could not speak. My mind was powerless to stop my spirit. I left the presentation materials with a note for my boss. I checked out of the hotel, drove to the airport, got an earlier flight, and returned home. I felt surprisingly calm on the trip home.

I knew my soul had made a statement to me in dramatic fashion. It scared me that I could not mentally overcome the powerful feelings within me. I felt a loss of control. It took me years to understand what happened within me. My work environment was, like many, an environment that did not respect human life. The men being wined and dined at this conference represented, for me, this cynical disrespect for people. Despite my high position and great success, the disrespect for all was killing my spirit, bit by bit, and my core essence did not want to die. My spirit told me to claim my freedom, to leave, and to save myself. This event merely opened long smoldering forces inside of me.

Unfortunately the rest of my life was not as ready to leave as my psyche was. It took me two years to position myself, emotionally and financially, to leave. I had invested my total self in my work the previous few years. I never felt more alive or creative. I had led industry-leading change. I believed I was at the peak of my contribution. I was responsible to thousands of employees. The work I did during that time was my art, and I knew the work would be destroyed when I left. This knowledge hurt me deeply. I felt guilty leaving employees who supported me and our vision for our organization. I felt I was abandoning them, and they would suffer when I left. I was also terrified of venturing into the unknown.

I suffered over what my responsibility was, where my loyalty should lie, if I was abdicating my promises and commitments. I realized I had to have faith in my soul’s message. I did not have to justify externally my inner stirrings. I finally understood that all is interconnected, and my soul’s messages were connected to other things unseen and listening to those messages and leaving were the right things to do. I knew I could not continue to help others or save the organization when I was floundering around trying to cope with the dysfunction around me. I had done all I could to help the people and organization, and I had to leave to save myself. Then I could continue, from the edges of systems, to help people and organizations change.

Many congratulated me on my choice to leave the organization and to begin a new adventure. Some called me selfish--suffering a large ego and not a good team player. Still others wished me failure as the possibility of success for me threatened them. I understood that free thinkers are ostracized; this is the test of our courage and commitment.

The only constant in life is impermanence. Endings are with us always. Endings are not failures but often signify progress and new beginnings filled with potential, possibilities, greater consciousness, refocused commitments, and increased creativity and complexity in life. Fate and unknown synchronicities brought me to the organization many years before and now fate would take me away. We must learn to honor this cosmic dynamic rather than resist it for a flawed continuity.

Our relationships (work, friendships, family) signal their endings long before we are conscious of the messages from the heart. When I reflect back on my embarrassing moment of walking away from a speaking engagement, I can see the warnings that came from my spirit for years before that moment. I pushed them aside believing I could control them by rational thought.

I hear managers speak of the resignation of a key employee and spouses speak of divorce each saying the ending were complete surprises. When questioned they can see the warnings along the way that they ignored hoping for magical quick-fixes to relationship difficulties. While they ignored the obvious, the employee or other spouse went through a terrifying and painful struggle to make a decision demanded by their soul even as their mind fought against such a difficult choice. The struggle of the spirit against rational thought show us that life is not in our control but is influenced by larger forces. We cannot will life to be as we would like it to be.

When we leave a relationship, whether work, a friendship, or a marriage, many want to find simple, rational reasons and assess blame to someone, usually the one who initiated the change. Blame is a defense designed to hide our own issues or responsibility for an ending.

I hear managers, friends, and spouses blame endings on the selfishness of the other person. My gut reaction when I hear such blame and judgement is to consider that the person blaming is the selfish one. Blame takes us away from soulful living, and when we catch ourselves blaming another we should see it as a sign that we need to look within ourselves to our own issues or responsibility. What in us demands that other conform to our wishes? What right do we have to impede, in any way, the freedom of another?

Moralistic judgments of other’s motives and actions and ego driven struggles against change only serve to block life’s natural process for change, creativity, and new growth. We cannot live creatively without many endings in our lives. Living a creative life, we will irritate many. People will see us doing what they fear to do and will project their envy, fear, jealousy, and judgments onto us for having the courage to hear and act on the call for change. Such behavior tells us we are on the right path. The bottom line for me is simple: if you cannot support my life’s journey, you cannot be in my life, no matter who you are or what our relationship has been.

If we resist the pain of endings and see ourselves as helpless victims, we get stuck in scapegoating, bitterness, and the bile of resentment. Relationships can simply outlive their usefulness and our holding on is a regressive resistance to zestful living. The more we hang on the more fearful we become for, at some level, we know we are going against our need for growth and change. We don’t evolve as people or move to the potential life offers us. What takes more character: leaving a relationship that no longer works or settling for a dumbed down life?

We can seize our destiny or we can rage against it. How much simpler if we accepted the impermanence of life and saw endings and the transformation of relationships as a normal aspect of life. Instead of assessing blame we might feel the pain and loss of endings and use the opening to the heart to bring forth deeper insight, learning, and awareness. Sometimes the work that brought a relationship together is finished and it is time to move on. Other times one partner in the relationship--personal or organizational--quits growing, and the other needs to continue growing and must leave.

In making difficult decisions we struggle with what our responsibility is to the relationship and what our responsibility is to our soul. We need to deepen our concept of responsibility. I was on a team that valued unwavering loyalty to one another even when the team or members of the team violated personal and organizational values. I choose to be loyal to my values and to alienate my team members. My loyalty is to spiritual values, not to people who live lives of lies.

Thomas Moore wrote in “SoulMates:”

In the deepest sense, to be responsible is to honor the mystery that lies at the very heart of every situation. Honoring the mystery may bring dishonor to the externals of a relationship and it may elicit the charge of irresponsibility, yet at a deeper level the action may be entirely responsible. Whenever I hear someone complain about another’s irresponsibility, I look for the mystery that is presenting itself as a frightening challenge to the offended one.

I believe that in all important decisions about relationships, personal or organizational, after a deliberate and thoughtful decision making process, reflection and study, consultation with trusted advisors, and prayer to our higher power our highest responsibility is to our spirit, our freedom, and our destiny. For without our soul, we are not alive and cannot help anyone. We are just another of the dead zombies that fill our offices and communities.

Going into the unknown is the most spiritual, responsible, and committed thing to do. It is irresponsible not to.

07/06/00

	Tom Heuerman, Ph.D., now resides in Fargo, North Dakota. Other writing by Tom Heuerman: Transformational Change a discussion of mechanistic change, transformational change ( including self-organization), the acceleration of organizational change, and sustainable change.
Articles written by Tom Heuerman for SelfHelp Magazine include: Farewell My Friend , Learning to Live , The New Leaders. Many more of Tom's articles can be found in the Careers & Work section.

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