Speak Easy Note #2 - Loss Is A Teacher

Last week I promised to write this Friday about a certain three-letter word that causes trouble and have decided to change my choice to a completely different four-letter word. This Friday is 9/11 and the only word that feels right to me to write about is LOSS.  For the past eight years on 9/11 I have commemorated the solemn losses that took place on that day in 2001.  Each year on 9/11 I walk from Ground Zero to Union Square in Manhattan.  I walk to remind myself of all of those people I saw walking north that day in 2001 with their shoes covered with ashes.  I walk to honor those who would never be able to walk again.  I walk to celebrate the gifts that come from loss.

The following is an excerpt from SPEAK EASY, The Communication Guide for Career and Life Success.

Loss Is A Teacher

For many people, a major communication deficit is the ability to face and talk about loss. Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Life breaks everyone and some become strong in the broken places.” In the play, The Fantasticks, there are these lyrics, “Without a hurt, the heart is hollow.” Loss is certainly a great teacher. What’s most precious to us is what we can lose most easily or what’s hardest to protect from loss. Loss is a natural outcome of living and it’s how we cope with it and how we see it that can be the source of our strength and the basis for developing the ability to master life’s challenges.

Since loss is inevitable, the more we can learn to focus on and communicate the gains that come from loss, the more we will experience loss in ways that are manageable and life-enriching.

There are many factors over which we have no control. We do, though, always have control over our perspectives and what we say to reflect them. The goal is to deal with what you face head on and to say what you want directly, rather than resort to being an ostrich.

The more you can talk about loss, using language that reflects what you’ve gained from what’s missing, the easier it will be to experience loss in a powerful, learning, and full-of-growth way.

The most striking example to illustrate this communication shift for me occurred in 2001, shortly after 9/11 in New York City. I was walking through Bryant Park on a glorious autumn day. Giant white cloud-puffs floated in the brilliant blue sky behind the gleaming surrounding skyscrapers. I had been experiencing severe grief over the senseless destruction and needless sacrifice of life that had occurred a few weeks before. Like many New Yorkers, I’d been living with an enormous weight that I carried everywhere. It had kept me terrorized reclusively within a tiny radius of blocks from my home and office. Every communication I had, focused on my unbearable sense of loss. I had only just begun to venture beyond my fabricated self-designated safe zone.

Suddenly, a recognition and feeling of gratitude came over me. I felt grateful to be alive, to see the magnificence of my city, to know how precious life is, to recommit myself to making a difference in the world, to be able to give back for all that I had. I saw the world as inviting again rather than terrifying. Strangest of all, I felt gratitude to the terrorists for providing an unthinkable way for me to gain such deep appreciation. I knew that if I could go back in time, change history and pluck those airplanes from the sky, I’d have waved that life-saving magic wand in less than an instant.

Somehow I’d found a way to see and communicate the beauty of what I’d lost and the magnificence of what I’d gained from loss.

Without painful and extraordinary loss, we can never value and see what we have in such a deep way. I’ve made dramatic choices in my life that often astound people. To me these valiant but simple choices reflect what I’ve learned from loss. Loss is our best teacher. “Without a loss, the heart is hollow.”

Here are contrasting ways to speak about life situations that demonstrate how you can adjust your perspectives and the way you communicate regarding loss:

AVOID: “Without my wife of fifty-three years, life’s not worth getting out of bed each day.”

BETTER: “The memory of my wife of fifty-three years gives me renewed strength to tackle life every day.”

AVOID: “I’ll never do that again, after all that I lost the last time I tried it.”

BETTER: “The next time I do that, I’ll know a lot more about how to go about it, based on what I’ve learned from my previous experience and loss.”

AVOID: “Now that I no longer have a mentor to guide me, I feel so lost.”

BETTER: “With all I gained from my mentor who is no longer here, I have many great teachings to draw from and use as guides to the present and future.”

Looking at life from a different perspective and finding language to reflect that perspective is the goal of choice. The more you shift perspectives about loss to perspectives of gain and use language that demonstrates the new views, the more successful your communications will be and the better you will feel about yourself and what you have to say.

To learn more about and/or purchase the book go to Word Craft Press

Next week, the three-letter trouble-maker word will finally make it's debut on Speak Easy Notes.

Until next Friday,
The Wordsmith