“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Quote from Matthew 11: 28-30
Introduction
The above quote from scripture is probably one that many of us have heard before and can relate to because all of us carry burdens throughout our journey in life. Burdens can be like the ocean, ebbing and flowing during different times in our life and they can be both physically demanding as well as emotionally draining. As an executive and career coach, I am continually heartened at how my clients manage such heavy burdens and the amazing strength and resiliency they exhibit in powering through them. When I think of the burdens we carry throughout our life, it often evokes the image of a backpack. We see children and young adults of all ages lugging those backpacks to and from school with many different designs and color combinations — so much for my generation’s bag of choice which typically was either a brown or black book bag! Adults have enthusiastically embraced the trend as the backpack has replaced those gray Samsonite briefcases that we used to carry on the commuter train, the subway ride, or on all those airline flights for the business trip. My own backpack is one of your basic versions from that great company The North Face and I am continually amazed at how much stuff I can pack into that backpack.
Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with my daughter Katie about backpacks and she reminded me that after coming home from Stuart Country Day School one day, she and her big sister Tarah decided to weigh their backpacks because they were getting too heavy to carry around, especially from the weight of all those bulky and heavy textbooks. Looking back to those days, we had a good laugh because when Katie and Tarah placed their backpacks on the scale, they each weighed 40 pounds — ouch! So naturally I decided that I needed to weigh my own backpack and to take a quick inventory of some of the things I often carry when I head into NYC for a client meeting or go out for a hike with one or more of the 3 Golden Retrievers in our family — Bob (our senior statesman and named after our favorite movie character of all time, Bob Wiley from What About Bob), Cali (now 6 months old and named for our daughter who resides in California), and Jersey Girl (now 4 months old) our son Patrick’s puppy who comes from you guessed it — California.
Typically, my backpack will include any of the following items: water (usually my Blue Nalgene bottle); definitely some rain gear (jacket and umbrella); my orange Jersey Shore Running Club hat; a Thermos (and yes, I’ve been told many times that I make a delicious cup of coffee ); a sandwich (before my stent procedure it was usually a PB&J but now it’s just turkey); a snack (in pre-stent days some cookies but now an energy bar and an apple); a book or two for pleasure reading (BTW — they weigh far less than my children’s oversized textbooks did); my iMac laptop and/or my IPad; and, my notebooks and other files that I typically can work on during the train ride. Well, even with all the above items stacked inside my backpack, my basic North Face Model only weighed 23lbs! However, but lugging that backpack around these past few years may help explain why I need to see my chiropractor Dr. Mike every Saturday morning.
The Backpack Could Also Be a Metaphor for What We Carry in Our Heart
The quote from Matthew’s scripture helped me realize that the backpack is also a metaphor for all the things both physical and emotional that we carry in our heart, burdens which if they remain unresolved can weigh a lot more than my daughter’s 40-pound backpack or my own 23-pound version. There was a great scene from a movie made in 2009 called Up in the Air where the main character Ryan Bingham (played by the actor George Clooney) is a well-known business consultant who in an appearance at an industry conference, describes the backpack in very visual terms by first having them consider all of the material and physical possessions they carry in our backpacks. Then, in a later scene in the movie, Bingham asks those same attendees to visualize all of the personal and professional relationships that they carry in their backpacks. The backpack and what we carry in it is an incredibly effective exercise I often use in a client engagement because it gets you to think about all the things that are going on in your life and how we might be able to set boundaries between work and our personal life more effectively and to also help us clarify our priorities.
As a professional coach, no matter what type of coaching engagement it may be — executive, career transition, life/personal, or an organizational assignment — it is often a client’s emotional backpack that may need to be unpacked and set free to help support a desired outcome or goal that is set during the engagement. Unpacking the backpack of what we carry in our hearts can be painful and challenging but also incredibly liberating and energizing. Any unpacking that may take place during an engagement, needs to be done with great sensitivity, utmost respect, and in a manner totally free of judgement. Unpacking that backpack of your heart can often lead to a new, healthier direction in one’s life and/or career and even foster a new sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Here’s a real-world sampling of some of the more common things that we often carry in the backpack of our hearts, those heavy burdens that Matthew speaks to that tax our energy, our self-confidence and often leave us feeling paralyzed as to how we can resolve them:
Grief — All of us carry grief for the people in our life who are no longer here. We may not even realize until the unpacking begins, that we haven’t fully grieved and processed all of those losses of our life. Often, as we move through life, we don’t realize how powerful the cumulative effect of our past losses can be on ourselves which is why every loss, no matter how painful or deep, needs to be fully absorbed. I am a firm believer that as difficult as the grieving process can be, it can lead to a future period of grace and gratitude where you begin to more fully appreciate the gift of having had that person(s) in your life. Grieving is a process that requires the passage of time, with some losses requiring more time than others to grieve and some losses that can probably never be fully resolved on the terms we would like. But at its core, grief and loss weigh a ton and working through the grieving process might help us lighten the load in the backpack of our heart.
Regrets – Most of us have regrets for the things we wished we had done but didn’t do or for the things we did do that really hurt someone. Regrets can take a heavy toll and weigh a ton in the backpack of our hearts. Sometimes, we have regrets for the choices we made at different periods in our life and/or career, some that worked out well, others that didn’t pan out the way we hoped they would. Maybe it’s regrets for a personal or professional relationship that didn’t turn out the way we would have liked or for not always being there when someone we love may have needed us the most. Whatever regrets we may be carrying in the backpack of our hearts, they can weigh us down both consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes acknowledging our regrets can bring us closer to the peace we seek and the grace that comes from having learned from those experiences. Acknowledging our regrets can help us move forward in a healthier, more positive way.
Fear and Self-Limiting Beliefs — If we allow them to, fear and our self-limiting beliefs can occupy all the available capacity in our minds and effectively weigh down the backpack of our hearts. Fear has this pulverizing, non-discriminatory way of crowding out just about everything good in our life. Most of us have probably encountered periods where it seems as if there’s that little gremlin inside our brain that is always reminding us of all the things that can go wrong with any decision we know we must make. That fear of failure or of making the wrong choice, can often get in the way of us making any decision. And, indecisiveness alone adds a lot of weight to the load we are already carrying. Fear might be the heaviest weight of all the emotional things that we carry in the backpack of our hearts — it saps our energy, destroys our sense of self-esteem, and keeps us from visualizing all the things that are possible and moving in a direction that we know we must make. Sometimes, we game plan every “what if scenario” we can think of which only serves to complicate the decisions we know we need to make.
Guilt — Catholics often joke about guilt and how they believe they are the world’s leading experts on the topic yet we all know that everyone suffers from guilt. That feeling of guilt for a past transgression or for something that we failed to do doesn’t always go away when we would like it too, even if the aggrieved party has forgiven us for our hurtful actions. Sometimes, forgiveness gives way to the hoped-for outcome of reconciliation but not always. The emotional pain or guilt we feel from that experience can linger for a long time. There’s the guilt we often feel for not always doing the right thing or for all the times we aren’t being “the best version of ourselves” or the times we try to be someone that we know deep down we are not. Or, how about the extra guilt that we may feel when we continue making the same mistake or aggrieve the same person repeatedly with our behaviors. Resolving guilt might be one of our greatest challenges in taking some of the weight out of the backpack of our heart. But our faith does offer us a path forward, one that encourages us to continue seeking forgiveness and repentance for those we have hurt. It’s a continual process but it can lead to inner peace and a lighter backpack. We can also take some solace in those timeless words from Ephesians 1:7 “Thank God I am forgiven”.
Past Failures — Many of us continue to carry the weight of past failures in our personal and professional lives deep inside our hearts. Maybe it’s the failures we perceive in some of the many roles and hats we wear throughout life as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, friends, and colleagues. Maybe it’s a perceived failure for not always taking care of the sheep in our own flock or even failing to take care of ourselves the way we could have. Maybe it’s our sense of failure for not seeing with clarity where the cheese in our personal life and career was moving and not being able to build the kind of relationships with colleagues that we know we were capable of. Failures can weigh a ton in the backpack of our hearts but I was heartened by the soothing words of a Catalonian Monk, Fr. Michael Fish who during a spiritual retreat I attended earlier this year reminds us that any failures we may have experienced to date might simply be a dress rehearsal for the better life that lies ahead of us. Failures, while painful and heavy, can lead to a better place in our future, one defined by peace, humility, and grace.
Unfulfilled Dreams— Many of us may still carry in the backpack of our hearts the dreams we had when we were younger and have never been fulfilled. Our dreams are a big part of what makes us unique and the disappointment we may feel from not fulfilling a dream can really weigh us down. To this day, I often find myself thinking about my big dream of playing college basketball at Princeton, a dream that began at the age of 10 from reading the book “A Sense of Where You Are” by John McPhee and the story of Bill Bradley, the All-American player who led those great Princeton teams of the mid 1960s. Sometimes I find myself thinking of some of the cool jobs that I had a clear interest in during my career and either didn’t put myself out there for serious consideration like potential roles as either a cable business news reporter or business/investigative journalist and some of those other positions I did aggressively pursue but didn’t come through for me like a few Dean’s positions for Business School or one of the senior management roles at Educational Testing Service (ETS) where I was a finalist. Fr. Fish, the inspiring Catalonian Monk whom I referenced earlier, offers some encouraging words about the weight of an unfulfilled dream — “Maybe your unfulfilled dreams were never meant to be. Maybe there’s something even better waiting for us if we can just let the old dreams go.” Letting go of an unfilled dream can really lighten the load of the backpack of our hearts.
Fractured Relationships We Can’t Control — How about relationships from our past or even those in our present life that continue to sap your strength and energy and claw at you like an open sore. Sometimes it’s a personal or professional relationship where we worry whether we have done everything we could have to help that person make better choices in their life but also realize that we don’t control the outcome. Situations where we know that we must meet that person where they are and not where we think they should be. In many of those situations, we may have to practice what my good friend Fr. Hank calls “Separation with Affection”, meaning that we may have to take a break for a while in our relationship with that person. We still hope for good things for that person and engage in prayer for that person that they can find the strength to make better choices in their life. Or, maybe there’s an old family script that get replayed at every family reunion or Holiday get together. Maybe it’s a voice that we constantly hear that limits us in what we think we can achieve, a voice that makes us feel less whole, or a voice that hurts our self-esteem. Broken, wounded relationships can weigh a ton in the backpack of our heart, especially for those people we will always love and where the desire to mend the fracture and the brokenness is always our hope. In a spiritual context, maybe we could ask God to help us lighten our load and ask for his help in guiding us back to the wholeness that we seek. Maybe, we could even ask him to help us write a new script, one complete with new chapters and a future storyline we can aspire to, a story that can lead to the inner peace we seek.
Strategies to Help Us Lighten the Load — Some Inspiration from Scripture
All the things that we carry in the backpack of our hearts — grief, regrets, fear, guilt, past failures, unfulfilled dreams, and our fractured relationships — they all weigh a ton and spoil the journey we are on and the one that God asks us to make during our earthly pilgrimage. Matthew’s scripture provides great comfort in knowing that there is no earthly burden of ours that is too heavy to ask for God’s help in lightening our load. For many years, I believed that asking someone for their help was a sign of great personal weakness but thankfully, I now recognize that asking for someone’s help is a sign of great strength and resilience. And of course, our faith encourages us to seek God’s grace as we ask Him to provide us with the strength and resolve to handle whatever He may put in front of us.
Several other scripture readings offer us hope and inspiration as we try and unpack some of those heavy burdens we carry. For example, Matthew 21:33-43 presents us with the beautiful parable about a vineyard that is always available to each of us. It’s a vineyard that contains everything we need to find that inner peace we are searching for. Unemployment, the stresses from home life, financial difficulties, a loved one who is sick, rejection, fears, and all those other burdens that we are carrying in the backpack of our hearts may keep us in the dark, but that vineyard that God provides for us is always within our grasp. Philippians 4: 6-9, reminds us as well that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”. It’s a way of reminding us that God has set no preconditions for us to access that vineyard – it’s always available 24/7. And, St. Paul in his Letter to Romans 8: 39 give us a potential blueprint on how we can get to the vineyard when he asks us to think about the things in our life that can coexist with whatever present darkness and burdens we might be carrying – “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
We help ourselves when we take the time to reflect on all the good things that perhaps we may have lost sight of. And, yes we still acknowledge the difficult and heavy burdens that we may be carrying in our backpacks but we also take notice whenever we can of the good things in our lives. It’s a reminder that God’s inner peace is always an option for us to pursue and hold onto. He never shuts down that option for us and He will always meet us wherever we are.
I wish my friends and fellow colleagues the best in identifying all the things you may be carrying in the backpack of your heart. I hope that you too can lighten the load from whatever burdens you may be carrying and find that inner peace we all seek on our journey through life. I close this spiritual reflection on the backpack of our hearts with a beautiful poem by Francis Dorff. It is my hope that it can offer you as much inspiration and inner peace as it did for me.
Blessings to all, Dr. K
LIGHTENING THE LOAD by Francis Dorff
The first thing we have to do is to notice that we’ve loaded down this camel with so much baggage, we’ll never get through the desert alive. Something has to go.
Then we can begin to dump the thousand things we’ve brought along until even the camel has to go and we’re walking barefoot on the desert sand.
There’s no telling what will happen then. But I’ve heard that someone, walking in this way, has seen a burning bush.
