Healing, of course always happens.
The muscles recover.
The scar tissue forms.
The heart mends.
Rarely, though, does healing happen on the schedule we expect. “Time heals all wounds,” as they say, but time also waits for no one. Our hopes and are plans are, sadly, irrelevant.
It’s far too easy to get stuck in that gap between expectation and reality.
To find yourself questioning progress and asking, “will this ever get better?”
Or, worst of all, to allow the stuck-ness to become a thing in and of itself, one that has its own story, its own reality, and its own energy.
This can happen in matters of the body, in matters of the heart, at the level of a company or even nationally.
“How well are we doing, really?” is rarely the question we ask ourselves.
Rather, it is, “where did I hope we’d be right now?”
One of the hardest jobs of a leader is to help our teams be clear-eyed about the challenges of the present without letting them lose sight of the daily wins, the accomplishments big and small, the things that used to be hard that today are easy.
Our plans are just that—hopes about what will come to pass.
“Longer than we’d hoped” is so much more common than “that was easier than I expected.”
It just makes for worse headlines.
P.S. Last week’s post on how product-market fit might be different for social entrepreneurs generated a great conversation on LinkedIn, in case you want to check that out.
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