Episode Notes

Enmeshment is common amongst entrepreneurial leaders. Whether you have a psychology degree or not, it is natural, almost necessary, to be totally engrossed in realizing a big vision. I am not talking about workaholism, where there is a hyper-fixation on work with little joy, although that might be some of what Daniel Libby, Ph.D., is sorting out. I am talking about implementing a big vision that, to achieve it, encompasses your entire being. Dan gives an honest self-assessment of his mental health at the end of his 12-year reign.

Dan acknowledges how difficult it has been to separate his identity and self-worth from Veterans Yoga Project. A national organization he built over 12 years. Separating your identity and self-worth from your entity is a real thing. We can be so focused on achieving the mission that we forget about the people in front of us, as Dan realized. Almost always, these are the gems we uncover during significant life changes like the sale or closing of a business or in Dan’s case, transitioning out of a nonprofit enterprise.

He is taking the first quarter of 2023 to reflect. This includes a 10-day Vipassana Retreat. We discuss the purpose of a silent retreat and what he fears.

During the last six months of 2022, Dan deliberately planned to pass his Executive Director role to the well-respected veteran Brianna Renner. It took courage to recognize that this next growth phase for Veterans Yoga Project is best carried out with a new leader and operations officer, Brianna Renner. Thankfully, his leadership team and board of advisors agreed.

At the start of 2023, as a freed-up man ready to take a sabbatical to figure out the next phase of his lifework. He is looking forward to self-focus and self-growth and discovering something that can be as rewarding, joy-inspiring, and fulfilling as the work he did to advance Veterans Yoga Project, only on a smaller scale. His statement reminded me of a friend who finished an Ironman Triathlon saying she would never do that again. A few months later, she is contemplating her next Ironman Triathlon.

To refresh your memory from last week’s podcast conversation, Dan worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Yale University Department of Psychiatry at the West Haven VA Medical Center, Connecticut. “While providing psychotherapy for veterans recovering from PTS(D), he found that those who developed empowering self-regulating practices had better outcomes — they moved through post-traumatic stress to post-traumatic growth more quickly and gracefully,” as summed up on the website. Thus, the idea for the VYP was born in 2010.

The Veterans Yoga Project (VYP) was formalized in Alameda, CA, in 2014. They are on a mission to support recovery and resilience among veterans, military families, and communities.

We explore more of what Dan learned as a leader. One basic leadership lesson was to allow people to be who they are and let them do what they need to do as executive team leaders, volunteers, or staff members. We also discuss his excitement for the future of VYP and re-emerging with a new vision once he accumulates all the wins and integrates the lessons he learned along the path of self-leadership mastery and life success.

My Reflection on Balance

I don’t believe an equal balance is achievable in small business ownership and entrepreneurial leadership. We need to be ‘all in.’ I mean invested, determined, and committed to the entrepreneurial journey, which is all about trial and error, learning as quickly as possible, and cash flowing our life as we realize our vision and live our mission.

Instead, we are better off focusing on meeting the seven Universal Human Needs categories of connection, physical well-being, honesty, play, peace, autonomy, and meaning. When our needs are met regularly, we increase feelings of affection, engagement, excitement, confidence, inspiration, exhilaration, gratefulness, hopefulness, and peacefulness, and feel refreshed. We also can individuate our needs from another’s more easily which keeps us out of enmeshment and co-dependent relationships. Focusing on meeting needs to me is more fulfilling than trying to achieve an elusive word like balance. DOWNLOAD

Here are some pictures of my daughter, Olivia, and I discovering a snow cave on a walk. We received 15 inches of snow last week and were making the best of it. So were our neighbors who built this winter cave.

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