Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Martin Luther (2016)

  That day Luther presented his “Theology of the Cross,” which stipulated the fundamental idea that we cannot reason our way to God. The passage in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 1:23 sums it up: “But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.”13 Luther might well have specified that the Greek he had in mind most of all was that fatiguing jackanapes Aristotle. But the point was that we can reason only so far. At some point, we come to an end and are stuck. It is at this point that we must stand and wait for God’s revelation to come to us. God must condescend to speak to us. If he does not, we have no hope. We are alone at the end of all human capability and logic, looking up. This view of course presented a challenge to the proponents of Scholasticism who were present, but what was most significant that day was that some of the younger participants seemed to understand it. Martin Bucer and Johannes Brenz were two young men who that day would become deeply enamored of Luther and his new theology and who would do their part in carrying it and its implications into their parts of the empire. Luther saw that his own colleagues and elders had a much more difficult time seeing what he was trying to communicate, deeply entrenched as they were in Scholasticism. “My theology is a pain in the neck for the Erfurters,” he said.14 He tried hard to bring his former professors Trutfetter and Usingen around to his thinking but failed. There was no invective whatever in his communications with them. He was moderate and sincere and respectful. Still, he never seemed to get anywhere in his dialogue with them. Prierias Takes the CaseMeanwhile, all of the dust that had been kicked up in Germany during these months had finally blown south to Rome, where there was much coughing, choking, and gagging. Who was this upstart German monk, and how had he dared to say such outrageous things against the pope and the church? Of course Luther hadn’t said a third of what he was purported to have said, but whatever he had said, he must in any case be called to give a full accounting of himself and his outrageous statements. Archbishop Albrecht had sent the theses to Rome about two months after he had received them, but news traveled more quickly in those days than we can suppose, and because the theses had been published in a number of cities and were making their way around Europe, we cannot know when the first copies got to the Vatican, nor just what perversions of the originals the rumor mill had been grinding.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Toward the end of their conversation, the archbishop asked Luther whether he himself might propose a solution; Luther almost offhandedly replied that the only thing he could think of was what Gamaliel had said in Acts 5, to “let the future decide” whether Luther and what he preached was of God or not. Luther was referring to that passage in which the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem had become furious that Peter and the apostles refused to stop preaching about Jesus and wanted to put them to death. But Gamaliel, who was one of the most respected of them, counseled that they be left alone. “Let them go!” he said. “For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”5 So Luther was comparing himself to the early apostles, who were also persecuted, and asking that he be allowed to continue doing what he was doing. In addition, he asked that the archbishop simply allow him to depart Worms gracefully. After this meeting, Luther was determined to take a well-earned powder, but Spalatin informed him he was not yet free to go. Then, on the evening of the next day, the twenty-fifth, von der Ecken and two other men visited Luther to inform him what had been decided. Von der Ecken said that because of his unrepentant attitude the emperor would indeed be taking action against him. Therefore Luther must be back at Wittenberg within twenty-one days. More important, during that time, he was forbidden to preach and even to write. They especially didn’t want Luther to write an account of what he had experienced at Worms, which would likely stir up further dissent. The emperor granted Luther safe-conduct during this time. That was all. Luther’s response was cheerful: “As it pleases the Lord; blessed be the name of the Lord!”6 He knew that he was free, that he had done what he needed to do, and that God would do the rest. What that was, was God’s business. He agreed to obey all that had been asked of him and even shook von der Ecken’s hand in parting.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  One thing I beg of you: for Christ’s mercies, do not indiscriminately believe the accusations that are made against either Wenceslas [Linck] or me. You say that my teachings are praised by those who patronize brothels, and that my recent writings have given great offense. I am not surprised or afraid of this. Certainly we have done nothing here other than publicize the pure Word among the people without [creating] a disturbance, and this we are [still] doing. Both the good and the bad are making use of the Word; [and] as you know, it is not in our power to control [how they use it]. . . . We will do what Christ predicted when he said that his angels would gather out of his kingdom all causes of offense. My Father, I must destroy that kingdom of abomination and perdition which belongs to the pope, together with all his hangers-on. He [Christ] is doing this without us, of course, without the help of a human hand, solely through the Word. The Lord knows the end of it. The matter is beyond our power of comprehension and understanding. Therefore there is no reason why I should delay until someone is able to understand it. Because of the greatness of God, it is most fitting that there should arise proportionately great disturbance of minds, great causes of offense, and great monstrosities. Do not let all these things disturb you, my Father. I am very hopeful. You can see in these things God’s counsel and his mighty hand. Remember how from the beginning my case has always seemed to the world to be terrible and intolerable, yet it has grown stronger day by day. It will also prevail over that which you so greatly fear; just wait a little while. Satan is feeling his wound; this is why he is raging this way, and throwing everything into confusion. But Christ, who has begun this work, will tread him under foot, and all the gates of hell will strive against Christ in vain. . . . I am daily challenging Satan and his armor all the more, however, so that the Day of Christ may be hastened in which he will destroy the Antichrist. Farewell, my Father, and pray for me. Dr. [Hieronymus Schurff], Rector Amsdorf, and Philip send their greetings. . . . Yours, Martin Luther19

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Six months into the job, we were heartened: Larry Culp was quoted from his appearance on Mad Money on CNBC in the CNBC article “GE Will Be Transparent about Challenges in Its Turnaround Plan, CEO Larry Culp says,” by Tyler Clifford, March 14, 2019. by 2013, executives at AT&T: The account of AT&T was chronicled from the Harvard Business Review article “AT&T’s Talent Overhaul,” by John Donovan and Cathy Benko, October 2016. Evidence on the value of frequent check-ins: The BetterWorks data was quoted from the Fast Company article “Why the Annual Performance Review Is Going Extinct,” by Kris Duggan, October 20, 2015. According to a Leadership IQ survey of thirty thousand people: The survey is quoted from the Forbes article “Fewer Than Half of Employees Know if They’re Doing a Good Job,” by Mark Murphy, September 4, 2016. When Lutz Ziob was general manager of Microsoft Learning: Lutz Ziob’s story was told to us by Liz Wiseman and confirmed by Ziob. more than half of workers say their managers become more closed-minded: That more than half of managers become more controlling during crisis is from the Harvard Business Review article “When Managers Break Down Under Pressure, So Do Their Teams,” by David Maxfield and Justin Hale, December 17, 2018. This is such an important concept that “Bias for Action”: Amazon’s principle of “Bias for Action” was found on aboutamazon.com under “Our Leadership Principles.” according to Forbes, nine out of ten managers: The statistic that managers shy away from giving feedback is from the Forbes article “Today’s Workers Are Hungry for Feedback; Here’s How to Give It to Them,” by G. Riley Mills, September 27, 2019. 65 percent of today’s workers feel shortchanged: The statistic that employees want more feedback is from the Forbes article “65% of Employees Want More Feedback (So Why Don’t They Get It?),” by Victor Lipman, August 8, 2016. A leader who was effective at this kind of upward communication: James Rogers’s story was taken from the Harvard Business Review article “Leadership Is a Conversation,” by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, June 2012. Chapter 3: How to Turn Less into More Brandon Webb passed the challenge: Webb is quoted, and information gleaned on the Navy SEALs, from the Observer.com article “Bulletproof Mind: 6 Secrets of Mental Toughness from the Navy SEALs,” by Charles Chu, November 25, 2016, and from interviews with Dr. Rita McGrath. global staffing firm Robert Half showed: The 91 percent statistic on burnout is from the Inc. article “In a New Study, 90 Percent of Employees Admit to Feeling Burned Out. Here Are 3 Ways to Successfully Manage It,” by Michael Schneider, September 24, 2019. As Adam Grant of the Wharton School: Dr.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  They want validation, not growth. Leaders can continue to patiently try to enroll these folks in the coaching process, but at some point we have to decide if they are the right fit for their roles. In this case, our uncollaborative worker was eventually “remixed” after team member complaints grew too loud to ignore (by then we had a new CEO). Yet despite the uncoachable out there, we must persist in helping our people excel and thrive. Feedback—both positive and constructive—is necessary to developing mental toughness and resilience in team members. Constructive feedback is vital because it clarifies expectations, builds confidence that people can improve, and helps team members learn from and recover from mistakes (which we all make). It’s also worth noting that with time, these conversations become less uncomfortable. When it’s the norm in a team, people don’t take correction as personally. It’s just a part of the way the group runs, which is why these one-on-ones should be positive and genuinely constructive, not intense or awkward. Putting the Methods Together Doria Camaraza is senior vice president and general manager of the American Express Service Centers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Mexico City, Mexico; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has led a very large team of thousands of call center professionals through more than a decade of perpetual change and uncertainty. One of the best leaders we have worked with, Camaraza attempts to be transparent about situations facing the volatile credit card industry and commits to her people that she’ll inform them as soon as she knows something may be changing. A few of the formal values she encourages her leadership team to live by include: “We communicate openly, honestly, and candidly”; “We seek solutions and not blame”; and “We try to involve people in decisions that affect them.” Camaraza shares tough news, but also gives an ample amount of hope. She explains to her employees why the company maintains a proprietary operation rather than outsourcing to a third-party call center. She lets them know what they need to maintain in terms of timeliness, accuracy, and cost. Leaders often shy away from discussing hard truths. They fear that such a discussion might dishearten their workers or cause them to bolt. And yet, there’s something exhilarating for employees about facing facts head-on. Such inclusion helps people feel like they are being brought into the inner circle to brainstorm solutions to challenges. Ambiguity either prolongs inevitable bad news or widens the trust gap. Or both. We were particularly affected by a conversation we had with Ryan Westwood, CEO of business management firm Simplus, who spoke about the link between anxiety and uncertainty. “There is an inherent distrust in leaders today,” he said. That is a powerful understanding, and we wish every manager knew how true it is.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The Faylasufs reverted to the older universalist approach, even though they reached it by a different route. We have a similar opportunity today. In our scientific age, we cannot think about God in the same way as our forebears, but the challenge of science could help us to appreciate some old truths. We have seen that Albert Einstein had an appreciation of mystical religion. Despite his famous remarks about God not playing dice, he did not believe that his theory of relativity should affect the conception of God. During a visit to England in 1921, Einstein was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury what were its implications for theology. He replied: “None. Relativity is a purely scientific matter and has nothing to do with religion.” 15 When Christians are dismayed by such scientists as Stephen Hawking, who can find no room for God in his cosmology, they are perhaps still thinking of God in anthropomorphic terms as a Being who created the world in the same way as we would. Yet creation was not originally conceived in such a literal manner. Interest in Yahweh as Creator did not enter Judaism until the exile to Babylon. It was a conception that was alien to the Greek world: creation ex nihilo was not an official doctrine of Christianity until the Council of Nicaea in 341. Creation is a central teaching of the Koran, but, like all its utterances about God, this is said to be a “parable” or a “sign” (aya) of an ineffable truth. Jewish and Muslim rationalists found it a difficult and problematic doctrine, and many rejected it. Sufis and Kabbalists all preferred the Greek metaphor of emanation. In any case, cosmology was not a scientific description of the origins of the world but was originally a symbolic expression of a spiritual and psychological truth. There is consequently little agitation about the new science in the Muslim world: as we have seen, the events of recent history have been more of a threat than has science to the traditional conception of God. In the West, however, a more literal understanding of scripture has long prevailed. When some Western Christians feel their faith in God undermined by the new science, they are probably imagining God as Newton’s great Mechanick, a personalistic notion of God which should, perhaps, be rejected on religious as well as on scientific grounds. The challenge of science might shock the churches into a fresh appreciation of the symbolic nature of scriptural narrative.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Mystics, as we shall see, also found the notion of emanation more sympathetic than the doctrine of the creation ex nihilo . Far from seeing philosophy and reason as inimical to religion, Muslim Sufis and Jewish Kabbalists often found that the insights of the Faylasufs were an inspiration to their more imaginative mode of religion. This was particularly evident in the Shiah. Although they remained a minority form of Islam, the tenth century is known as the Shii century since Shiis managed to establish themselves in leading political posts throughout the empire. The most successful of these Shii ventures was the establishment of a caliphate in Tunis in 909 in opposition to the Sunni caliphate in Baghdad. This was the achievement of the Ismaili sect, known as “Fatimids” or “Seveners” to distinguish them from the more numerous “Twelver” Shiis, who accepted the authority of twelve Imams. The Ismailis broke away from the Twelvers after the death of Jafar ibn Sadiq, the saintly Sixth Imam, in 765. Jafar had designated his son Ismail as his successor, but when Ismail died young the Twelvers accepted the authority of his brother Musa. The Ismailis, however, remained true to Ismail and believed that the line had ended with him. Their North African caliphate became extremely powerful: in 973 they moved their capital to al-Qahirah, the site of modern Cairo, where they built the great mosque of al-Azhar. The veneration of the Imams was no mere political enthusiasm, however. As we have seen, Shiis had come to believe that their Imams embodied God’s presence on earth in some mysterious way. They had evolved an esoteric piety of their own which depended upon a symbolic reading of the Koran. It was held that Muhammad had imparted a secret knowledge to his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib and that this ilm had been passed down the line of designated Imams, who were his direct descendants. Each of the Imams embodied the “Light of Muhammad” ( al-nur al-Muhammad ), the prophetic spirit which had enabled Muhammad to surrender perfectly to God. Neither the Prophet nor the Imams were divine, but they had been so totally open to God that he could be said to dwell within them in a more complete way than he dwelt in more ordinary mortals. The Nestorians had held a similar view of Jesus. Like the Nestorians, Shiis saw their Imams as “temples” or “treasuries” of the divine, brimful of that enlightening divine knowledge. This ilm was not simply secret information but a means of transformation and inner conversion. Under the guidance of his da’i (spiritual director), the disciple was roused from sloth and insensitivity by a vision of dreamlike clarity.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Come March, after I’ve been praying for a solution to our transportation woes, a professor I’ve met once or twice through mutual friends approaches me in the quad. She’s going to Italy and heard I needed a car. Maybe I could keep hers through the summer; she’d consider it a favor. And that’s how hard that was. Such unearned gifts feed the growing faith that some mystery is carrying me. The snow’s just melting when I take out the fourth credit card I can’t pay—one with a five-hundred-dollar limit and a fat percentage interest rate. That same week the university flies the creative writing profs to New York for a program fund-raiser. Once the dinner’s over, the writers cross the street to the Pierre Hotel to hang out. With its checkerboard floor and ornate armchairs, it’s like entering a Fred Astaire movie. That night Toby and his pals sing in loud harmony the old seventies hit “Helpless,” swaying side to side like a grade-school choir. I’m just finishing my Coke when who should come kneel at my seat but Toby’s agent from almost a year back. Where, she says with both charm and entitlement, is my damn memoir? I’m shocked she remembered me and even more shocked when I hear myself tell her the truth: I’m in the middle of a divorce and haven’t done that much—less than ten pages. She says, Send me a proposal. Maybe we can get you an advance. Here’s where grace comes in. Had I been drinking, I would’ve pretended to know what a proposal was, then lived in crouched fear, maybe trying to find out or not—being too afraid in my drinking form to fail at a proposal. Instead, I hear my mouth spill another truth: I don’t know the first thing about writing a proposal. She waves her hand like it’s the easiest thing in the world, saying, Maybe a hundred pages. Three or four chapters. In a poet’s mind, a hundred pages sounds like two thousand. I haven’t published a hundred pages in twenty years. How long do you think, she asks, before I can get those chapters? My head’s scrambling. I figure when Dev goes to stay with his dad mid-June, I’ll have a month to work, so I say, Mid-July. Great, she says. Then just add a letter saying what else you might put in the book. I must have a stunned look on my face. I’ll call you Monday, she says, and walk you through it. To write the stuff down is no cakewalk, since memories from that time can ravage me. But after I get home, I start getting up mornings at four or five, praying to set down words before Dev comes down. When Dev’s with Warren, I unplug the phone and apply my ass to a desk chair. Some days, I actually hear my daddy telling me stories, almost like he’s risen up to ride through the pages with Mother and our whole wacky herd. Come June, I send the agent pages on a Thursday, and she signs me the following Saturday, has an auction that week, and a few days later—while I’m chopping basil for supper—I hear the overnight envelope with payment hit my porch. In the steamy kitchen, I draw the check out and sit studying it before I even throw pasta in the bubbly water. It’s in no way a massive check, but it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen, and it’s fallen from the sky just in time to get us through the summer, plus making a down payment on a used Toyota. Saying thanks to the invisible forces that brought it, I sit looking at the check. On the table before me, there’s a giant pickle jar Dev’s filled with torn grass and crickets. The bent-legged bugs are whirring to fill the room, one or two trying to climb up the curved glass. Dev bursts in, saying, Mom, let’s set the crickets free tonight. And I tell him that’s just what I was thinking.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  In literary terms, a semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence but chose not to. It is used to pause—to take a breath—but another phrase always follows, one that can stand alone and independent of the first. For Parrie, and many more, that punctuation mark has become a symbol of the fight to continue writing their story with anxiety or any other mental health issue. She talks about a daily struggle to overcome the duality of her carefully crafted outward appearance of success versus her inward battle against perceived failure. Today, the semicolon has become one of the most popular tattoos in ink shops from Peoria to Paris. It symbolizes the concept of “before and after.” For those who suffer from anxiety overload, and for those leaders who watch over teams of human beings, the semicolon might symbolize a next step in all our progression. We aren’t suggesting any of us run to the closest ink shop and roll up our sleeves, but we are hoping that we all consider what entrenched behaviors we might be holding on to as leaders that are negatively affecting us, and those around us; then, we should take a breath and consider a new path using a few of the ideas we’ve shared in this book. In the world before , discussing subjects like anxiety was taboo, including and accommodating those who didn’t fit the mold too much work, biases and judgment all too common. In the world after , individualism will be valued; needless, harmful anxiety lessened; and those who struggle accepted with compassion. We hope you agree that it’s time to punctuate. AcknowledgmentsWe thank our agent Jim Levine, who grasped how important this topic could be and supported us from day one. Similarly, we were touched by the enthusiasm for the work of our editors Hollis Heimbouch and Rebecca Raskin of Harper Business. We owe a debt of gratitude to our critical reader Emily Loose, and we thank Christy Lawrence, who arranged many of the interviews and spent countless hours transcribing. Appreciation goes to our team at FindMojo.com: Paul Yoachum, Lance Garvin, Brianna Bateman, Bryce Morgan, Tanner Smith, Asher Gunsay, Garrett Elton, Mark Durham, and Jaren Durham. We thank Mark Fortier and Norbert Beatty, our publicists, and Brian Perrin and his team at Harper Business marketing. And we appreciate all those who are quoted herein; we were enriched by your wisdom.

• From A History of God (1993)

  He had tried, as it were, to confine God to his essence and say that it was impossible for him to be present outside it in his “energies.” But that was to think about God as though he were any other phenomenon and was based on purely human notions of what was or was not possible. Palamas insisted that the vision of God was a mutual ecstasy: men and women transcend themselves but God also underwent the ecstasy of transcendence by going beyond “himself” in order to make himself known to his creatures: “God also comes out of himself and becomes united with our minds by condescension.” 67 The victory of Palamas, whose theology remained normative in Orthodox Christianity, over the Greek rationalists of the fourteenth century represents a wider triumph for mysticism in all three monotheistic religions. Since the eleventh century, Muslim philosophers had come to the conclusion that reason—which was indispensable for such studies as medicine or science—was quite inadequate when it came to the study of God. To rely on reason alone was like attempting to eat soup with a fork. The God of the Sufis had gained ascendency over the God of the philosophers in most parts of the Islamic empire. In the next chapter we shall see that the God of the Kabbalists became dominant in Jewish spirituality during the sixteenth century. Mysticism was able to penetrate the mind more deeply than the more cerebral or legalistic types of religion. Its God could address more primitive hopes, fears and anxieties before which the remote God of the philosophers was impotent. By the fourteenth century the West had launched its own mystical religion and made a very promising start. But mysticism in the West would never become as widespread as in the other traditions. In England, Germany and the Lowlands, which had produced such distinguished mystics, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century decried this unbiblical spirituality. In the Roman Catholic Church, leading mystics like St. Teresa of Avila were often threatened by the Inquisition of the Counter-Reformation. As a result of the Reformation, Europe began to see God in still more rationalistic terms. 9 Enlightenment B Y THE END of the sixteenth century, the West had embarked on a process of technicalization that would produce an entirely different kind of society and a new ideal of humanity. Inevitably this would affect the Western perception of the role and nature of God. The achievements of the newly industrialized and efficient West also changed the course of world history. The other countries of the Oikumene found it increasingly difficult to ignore the Western world, as in the past when it had lagged behind the other major civilizations, or to come to terms with it.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Less than three weeks later, while Luther was in the midst of the horrors of the Peasants’ War, making his way home, he wrote his letter to Johannes Rühel, in which he advised him not to dissuade Count Albrecht from wiping out the rebellion. But in that letter, written on May 4, he slipped in a single bright line that fairly leaps from the surrounding bleak landscape of the letter: “If I can manage it, before I die I will still marry my Kathie to spite the devil, should I hear that the peasants continue.”7 Obviously, for him to write it so offhandedly in the midst of an otherwise grim and serious letter indicates that Rühel and Luther and others were well acquainted with this person and with the possibility of Luther’s marriage to her. That he should call her “my Kathie” is the most startling, because clearly things have been going on of which no other surviving letters give us any idea. But almost certainly, the one thing that would have focused his mind on marriage—such that he blurts this out in a letter about the “murdering hordes”—was his recent visit to his parents. Visiting them had been part of his recent trip, and if mentioning “my Kathie” in his letter to Rühel is any indication, he certainly mentioned her to his parents. For all we know, he visited them specifically to mention her to them. There is no doubt that they heartily approved the idea of their son’s at long last marrying and having children. Luther was now nearly forty-two. There were two other reasons that might have made marriage seem less difficult to Luther now. One we already know, and that is the death of Frederick. His views on priests and monks marrying were more traditional than not, and surely Luther was conscious that if he were to marry, it would trouble the man he so respected and who had done so much to protect him. But Staupitz had died recently too, and his death might have been even more important in clearing the way for Luther to marry. He knew full well that it would have greatly bothered Staupitz to know that his former protégé and spiritual son had married, and that he had married a nun would have seemed dramatically worse.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Anthony is passionate about raising awareness of mental health issues. We Thrive TogetherAdrian, Chester, and Anthony have created the We Thrive Together community, which brings together passionate working adults and leaders to eliminate the stigma of anxiety at work and create positive mental health in the workplace. There is no charge to join or be a member of Thrive, and the site contains a wealth of resources and peer support. Find a link to the community at GostickandElton.com. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com . More Praise for Anxiety at Work“Few things can paralyze the progress of any team or organization like anxiety. After decades of working with CEOs and business owners, I’ve noticed many have a negative mind-set when it comes to dealing with stress—a mindset that needs to be changed. Anxiety at Work offers practical ideas to help leaders develop healthier mindsets and healthier teams. This is a smartly written, step-by-step guide to creating a work culture that will attract and retain great people.” —John C. Maxwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned leadership expert “I’ve personally known anxiety—the struggle just to get out of bed every morning. Overcoming these feelings in myself, and helping others face their challenges, has been my life’s work for the past decade. I’m so grateful Gostick and Elton have turned their attention to helping in the working world, where tens of millions of employees feel overwhelmed and overanxious. In this fabulous new book, leaders will learn how to identify anxiety in their team members, understand the triggers of anxiety, and provide the right support. Anxiety at Work is the tool that businesses have been waiting for.” —Mel Robbins, daytime talk show host, CNN on-air analyst, and #1 bestselling author of The 5 Second Rule “When our team members feel too much anxiety, they attack change; they become combative or controlling as they try to ease the pain they feel. This makes organizational change difficult, even impossible. In this brilliant new book, Gostick and Elton help leaders build resilience with practical tools culled from decades coaching leaders to improve their organizational cultures.” —Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, world’s #1 leadership thinker and author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There “Anxiety at Work is brimming with practical ideas on how to create a safe, productive place to work—from the globally recognized thought-leaders in culture and employee engagement. This desperately needed guide will become an instant classic.” —Dr. Tasha Eurich, New York Times bestselling author of Insight and Bankable Leadership “Savoring this book feels like snuggling up in a warm comforter on a cold day. The enormous demands of our world are mitigated by using the insights offered. The ideas, stories, and tools will help anyone tame apprehensions and turn anxiety into assurance.” —Dr.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1644, in the midst of the English Civil War, John Milton published Areopagitica, his landmark defense of the freedom of expression. In 1689, England decided that it would tolerate religions other than the established Church of England. In the first years of that century, those men and women we today call the Pilgrims were being persecuted by King James in England. But emboldened by their faith, they would flee first to Holland and then in a famous ship cross the Atlantic to what is today Massachusetts. Hard on their heels were John Winthrop and what came to be called the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston. Religious tolerance certainly was not yet enshrined in their way of thinking. The stories of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams are two infamous examples. But in part because in the American colonies different faiths found themselves living cheek by jowl, tolerance of other views became a growing trend. During the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, George Whitefield preached the Gospel up and down the thirteen American colonies so often that by the time of his death in 1770 not less than 80 percent of all Americans had heard him preach in person at least once. What he preached was a kind of ecumenical Christianity that underscored the profoundly Lutheran idea that conscience and fealty to God preceded fealty to any church or government. It therefore followed that those who did violence to the teachings of Jesus must be disobeyed. This played a huge role in emboldening the American colonists to move toward self-government. When England forced their hand, as Rome had forced Luther’s, they would vote with their feet and rebel against their mother country, just as Luther had rebelled against Mother Church. The new nation in 1776 enshrined the idea of religious liberty in its laws, such that every citizen must be free to follow his own conscience and his own religion. This stands as another of the high-water marks of Luther’s legacy. The government of the new country was specifically forbidden to establish a religion in any state or throughout the country and was obliged to trust the free market of ideas—regulated by the democratic government of the people—to make such decisions as the people themselves thought best. It is this so-called wall of separation that allowed the genius of the free market of ideas to flourish.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We are thinking about how we make sure our managers are equipped to recognize the situation, where they may be contributing to the problem, and how best to address the issues with empathy and care. We haven’t completely cracked that nut yet, but we have started the conversation.” The hopeful news this book offers is that leaders of teams can adopt a set of eight simple practices we’ve identified that can greatly reduce the anxiety their people are feeling. Using these practices and the lessons throughout the book will help any leader convey that they genuinely care about those they are privileged to lead—sending them home each night feeling a little more valued, listened to, and included. The examples from leaders we’ve worked with will show the results can be profound. As we all adjust to a world deeply affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with heightened sensitivity that even the most successful organizations with solid growth plans and seemingly secure markets may face sudden upheaval at any time, these methods for nurturing employee resilience are needed now more than ever. Eight Strategies We have spent twenty years coaching individual managers and their teams about how to improve the work experience and organizational culture. Our research partners have helped us survey more than one million employees over the last decade, and we’ve seen powerful effects can be achieved by making easily implemented adjustments in how leaders manage. To assist specifically with the pressing challenges of rising anxiety levels, we’ve taken a deep dive into the science of what provokes anxiety in order to identify the management practices that have the greatest capacity to relieve it. From Adrian: My passion for this project has been fueled by my son, Anthony, who has helped write this book, investing it with rich perspective from one who has struggled intensely with the problem. Tony has suffered from severe anxiety since he was a child, but he was nonetheless able to graduate with honors from university as a biotechnology major. He excelled in tough classes like organic chemistry, physics, and bioinformatics, all while working part-time in an NIH-funded genetics lab and as a teaching assistant. We had many conversations throughout his undergraduate years about times when he felt he had become disconnected from his job or classes, despite his passion for the subjects and the experiments being conducted. Notwithstanding many late nights of studying and a passion to work for months at a time with no weekends off, he would now and then talk about how he felt he was going nowhere. In retrospect, these conversations screamed the duck syndrome. Many of our talks became reference points that showed up all too often in the stories told to us by workers who have recounted their anxiety.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  He left the meeting and over the next few hours confronted each person we’d quoted. Each recanted like a prisoner on the Spanish Inquisition rack. They agreed that, yes, he was a terrific collaborator, and, yes, we must have misinterpreted what they’d said. Our employee gladly returned to his delusions. We recognize that there is a small percentage of the human population who will never accept coaching. They want validation, not growth. Leaders can continue to patiently try to enroll these folks in the coaching process, but at some point we have to decide if they are the right fit for their roles. In this case, our uncollaborative worker was eventually “remixed” after team member complaints grew too loud to ignore (by then we had a new CEO). Yet despite the uncoachable out there, we must persist in helping our people excel and thrive. Feedback—both positive and constructive—is necessary to developing mental toughness and resilience in team members. Constructive feedback is vital because it clarifies expectations, builds confidence that people can improve, and helps team members learn from and recover from mistakes (which we all make). It’s also worth noting that with time, these conversations become less uncomfortable. When it’s the norm in a team, people don’t take correction as personally. It’s just a part of the way the group runs, which is why these one-on-ones should be positive and genuinely constructive, not intense or awkward. Putting the Methods TogetherDoria Camaraza is senior vice president and general manager of the American Express Service Centers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Mexico City, Mexico; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has led a very large team of thousands of call center professionals through more than a decade of perpetual change and uncertainty. One of the best leaders we have worked with, Camaraza attempts to be transparent about situations facing the volatile credit card industry and commits to her people that she’ll inform them as soon as she knows something may be changing. A few of the formal values she encourages her leadership team to live by include: “We communicate openly, honestly, and candidly”; “We seek solutions and not blame”; and “We try to involve people in decisions that affect them.” Camaraza shares tough news, but also gives an ample amount of hope. She explains to her employees why the company maintains a proprietary operation rather than outsourcing to a third-party call center. She lets them know what they need to maintain in terms of timeliness, accuracy, and cost. Leaders often shy away from discussing hard truths. They fear that such a discussion might dishearten their workers or cause them to bolt. And yet, there’s something exhilarating for employees about facing facts head-on.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Another valuable medicine was tried, but Luther said, “I am traveling hence, I will relinquish my spirit.” Again he repeated three times very quickly, in Latin, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, You have redeemed me, God of Truth,” after which he fell silent. Jonas and Coelius now asked him, “Reverend Father, will you die faithful to Christ and to the doctrine you have preached?” “Yes,” Luther replied clearly, so that all those around could hear him. He fell asleep again and, after a quarter of an hour, he gave up his spirit “in stillness and great patience.” Jonas and Coelius, who wrote the account, noted that “no one could discern (to this we bear witnesses before God on our consciences) any unrest or discomfort of his body, or pains of death.”19 Luther died, as he had lived, in public. The reason his last moments were watched and chronicled in such detail was that, according to medieval belief, a good death, especially one without pain, was a sure sign that the person had lived well and would go to heaven; a bad death would have suggested that he was a heretic. Luther’s last moments therefore became a final proof, for if he had died in agony, or despaired in his final hour, the Protestant movement itself would have been put into question. Everyone dreaded a sudden, unexpected end that left the individual unable to receive the last rites. In Lutheranism there was no such sacrament and no ritual framework for dying and so the death itself became its own testament. Lutherans themselves had made much capital out of the unhappy deaths of their enemies in the past.20 Zwingli’s death on the battlefield at Kappel had been deeply shocking, and for Luther it proved God’s judgment, not just on Zwingli but on the sacramentarian movement as a whole. In 1536 it was the turn of his old enemy Erasmus, who died in Basle without the presence of a priest and without having made confession. He had gone straight to hell, Luther believed, adding acidly that although it was said that Erasmus called on Christ to have mercy on his soul, this was probably an invention. For himself, Luther hoped that he would have a minister of the Word with him when he died.21 [image "SKD250674 Martin Luther (1483-1546) on his Deathbed, c.1546 (oil on panel) by Cranach, Lucas the Younger (1515-86) (studio of); 64x50.5 cm; Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany; (add.info.: auf dem Sterbebett;); © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_081_r1.jpg] [image "SKD250674 Martin Luther (1483-1546) on his Deathbed, c.1546 (oil on panel) by Cranach, Lucas the Younger (1515-86) (studio of); 64x50.5 cm; Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany; (add.info.: auf dem Sterbebett;); © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_081_r1.jpg] 68. Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther on His Deathbed. Many copies were made of this image.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Southgate’s success puts a spotlight on the new type of leaders the modern world is demanding. His style combines vulnerability with care for the individual. A student of leadership, the new manager brought in a psychologist/culture coach to work with the players. He even shared with his team his own personal experience of missing a penalty shot in Euro 96 that kept England from advancing to the championship. His willingness to discuss his setbacks and how anxiety affected him in the game has been a revolutionary concept in team management. It has liberated his players and staff to enjoy the challenge of competition rather than worry about the fear of failure and the “what if it all goes wrong” catastrophizing. Players say they now approach national team games with an excitement about showing off their skills to the world versus a fear of what might go wrong. Mental health had never been considered as important as technical excellence in sports, or in business for that matter, but teams are finding it is the mental game that is offering the greatest competitive advantage. Southgate was the first coach at a high level willing to talk about the anxiety that professional players face, and to help his team members by sitting down in frequent one-on-one and small-group discussions to talk through their life experiences and anxiety with compassion. That kind of leadership is incredibly inspiring for everyone, especially for those who struggle with anxiety. And leaders need to understand how important the anxious are to the success of any organization. We find society functions because of the worrywarts in it, not despite them. Indeed, observations of our animal cousins in the wild by the famous primatologist Dian Fossey revealed that anxious chimps were pivotal to the survival of groups. They were the light sleepers, the ones who sensed danger first and sounded the alarm; they constituted a chimpanzee early warning system. In one experiment, Fossey decided to move a group’s anxious chimps to another location, and when she returned a few months later she found the other apes had perished. It seems that group survival had hinged on having anxious individuals in the pack to alert the others to impending danger. It’s Beyond My Purview. Right?It’s easy to assume that some employees arrive at the workplace more able to bounce back from stressful situations than others, whether by nature or upbringing, and that there’s nothing much a leader can do to build up a person’s resilience. Admittedly, certain folks do seem to keep going, no matter what life throws at them, and there’s fascinating science attempting to identify why some of us humans are more naturally resilient than others. For instance, although nearly everyone suffers negative events over a lifetime—job loss, divorce, hospitalization, and so on—people respond to traumas very differently.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Many of these sects were Messianic in tone and proclaimed the imminent arrival of a wholly new world. There had been an outbreak of apocalyptic excitement in England under the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell, especially after the execution of King Charles I in 1649. The Puritan authorities had found it difficult to control the religious fervor that erupted in the army and among the ordinary people, many of whom believed that the Day of the Lord was at hand. God would pour his Spirit on all his people, as promised in the Bible, and establish his Kingdom definitively in England. Cromwell himself seems to have entertained similar hopes, as had those Puritans who had settled in New England during the 1620s. In 1649 Gerard Winstanley had founded his community of “Diggers” near Cobham in Surrey, determined to restore mankind to its original state when Adam had tilled the Garden of Eden: in this new society, private property, class distinction and human authority would wither away. The first Quakers—George Fox and James Naylor and their disciples—preached that all men and women could approach God directly. There was an Inner Light within each individual, and once it had been discovered and nurtured, everybody, irrespective of class or status, could achieve salvation here on earth. Fox himself preached pacifism, nonviolence and a radical egalitarianism for his Society of Friends. Hope for liberty, equality and fraternity had surfaced in England some 140 years before the people of Paris stormed the Bastille. The most extreme examples of this new religious spirit had much in common with the late medieval heretics known as the Brethren of the Free Spirit. As the British historian Norman Cohn explains in The Pursuit of the Millennium, Revolutionary Millennarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, the Brethren were accused by their enemies of pantheism. They “did not hesitate to say: ‘God is all that is,’ ‘God is in every stone and in each limb of the human body as surely as in the Eucharistic bread.’ ‘Every created thing is divine.’ ” 35 It was a reinterpretation of Plotinus’s vision. The eternal essence of all things, which had emanated from the One, was divine. Everything that existed yearned to return to its Divine Source and would eventually be reabsorbed into God: even the three Persons of the Trinity would finally be submerged into the primal Unity. Salvation was achieved by the recognition of one’s own divine nature here on earth. A treatise by one of the Brethren, found in a hermit’s cell near the Rhine, explained: “The divine essence is my essence and my essence is the divine essence.” The Brethren repeatedly asserted: “Every rational creature is in its nature blessed.” 36 It was not a philosophical creed so much as a passionate longing to transcend the limits of humanity. As the Bishop of Strasbourg said, the Brethren “say they are God by nature, without any distinction.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Again, this is said to have achieved astonishing results. As Abulafia explained, it brings to light hidden mental processes and liberated the Kabbalist from “the prison of the natural spheres and leads [him] to the boundaries of the divine sphere.” 57 In this way, the “seals” of the soul were unlocked and the initiate discovered resources of psychic power that enlightened his mind and assuaged the pain of his heart. In rather the same way as a psychoanalytic patient needs the guidance of his therapist, Abulafia insisted that the mystical journey into the mind could only be undertaken under the supervision of a master of Kabbalah. He was well aware of the dangers because he himself had suffered from a devastating religious experience in his youth which had almost caused him to despair. Today patients will often internalize the person of the analyst in order to appropriate the strength and health that he or she represents. Similarly Abulafia wrote that the Kabbalist would often “see” and “hear” the person of his spiritual director, who became “the mover from inside, who opens the closed doors within him.” He felt a new surge of power and an inner transformation that was so overwhelming that it seemed to issue from a divine source. A disciple of Abulafia gave another interpretation of the ecstasy: the mystic, he said, became his own Messiah. In ecstasy he was confronted with a vision of his own liberated and enlightened self: Know that the complete spirit of prophecy consists for the prophet in that he suddenly sees the shape of his self standing before him and he forgets his self and it is disengaged from him ... and of this secret our teachers said [in the Talmud]: “Great is the strength of the prophets, who compare the form of Him who formed it” [that is, “who compare men to God”]. 58 Jewish mystics were always reluctant to claim union with God. Abulafia and his disciples would only say that by experiencing union with a spiritual director or by realizing a personal liberation the Kabbalist had been touched by God indirectly. There are obvious differences between medieval mysticism and modern psychotherapy, but both disciplines have evolved similar techniques to achieve healing and personal integration. In the West Christians were slower to develop a mystical tradition. They had fallen behind the monotheists in the Byzantine and Islamic empires and were perhaps not ready for this new development. During the fourteenth century, however, there was a veritable explosion of mystical religion, especially in Northern Europe. Germany in particular produced a flock of mystics: Meister Eckhart (1260–? 1327), Johannes Tauler (1300–61), Gertrude the Great (1256–1302) and Henry Suso (ca. 1295–1306). England also made a significant contribution to this Western development and produced four great mystics who quickly attracted a following on the Continent as well as in their own country: Richard Rolle of Hampole (1290–1349), the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton (d.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Today, we generally see science and philosophy as antagonistic to religion, but the Faylasufs were usually devout men and saw themselves as loyal sons of the Prophet. As good Muslims, they were politically aware, despised the luxury of the court and wanted to reform their society according to the dictates of reason. Their venture was important: since their scientific and philosophic studies were dominated by Greek thought, it was imperative to find a link between their faith and this more rationalistic, objective outlook. It can be most unhealthy to relegate God to a separate intellectual category and to see faith in isolation from other human concerns. The Faylasufs had no intention of abolishing religion, but wanted to purify it of what they regarded as primitive and parochial elements. They had no doubt that God existed—indeed they regarded his existence as self-evident—but felt that it was important to prove this logically in order to show that al-Lah was compatible with their rationalist ideal. There were problems, however. We have seen that the God of the Greek philosophers was very different from the God of revelation: the Supreme Deity of Aristotle or Plotinus was timeless and impassible; he took no notice of mundane events, did not reveal himself in history, had not created the world and would not judge it at the end of time. Indeed history, the major theophany of the monotheistic faiths, had been dismissed by Aristotle as inferior to philosophy. It had no beginning, middle or end, since the cosmos emanated eternally from God. The Faylasufs wanted to get beyond history, which was a mere illusion, to glimpse the changeless, ideal world of the divine. Despite the emphasis on rationality, Falsafah demanded a faith of its own. It took great courage to believe that the cosmos, where chaos and pain seemed more in evidence than a purposeful order, was really ruled by the principle of reason. They too had to cultivate a sense of an ultimate meaning amid the frequently disastrous and botched events of the world around them. There was a nobility in Falsafah, a search for objectivity and a timeless vision. They wanted a universal religion, which was not limited to a particular manifestation of God or rooted in a definite time and place; they believed that it was their duty to translate the revelation of the Koran into the more advanced idiom developed through the ages by the best and noblest minds in all cultures. Instead of seeing God as a mystery, the Faylasufs believed that he was reason itself.