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Welcome to Episode 136 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast, I'm Jack Shitama and I came across material for today's episode in an article by Eric Barker titled This is the Most Fun Way to Make Your Life Awesome.

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I will post both in the show notes. It turns out there is one main factor in determining whether people live happier lives. This is called generativity and is the desire to make life better for future generations. We know that doing things for others makes us feel good, but apparently when it's grounded and a sense of purpose that is very idealistic, it makes us happier. McAdam studied happy people and found that the one thing they have in common is the structure of the story they tell themselves.

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He found that everyone has what is called a contamination sequence. This is a series of bad occurrences that can make life really difficult. The list of occurrences that can make up a contamination sequence is nearly endless. The untimely death of a loved one, a job loss or business failure, a serious illness or a betrayal in a relationship. The loss of a home are just a few. The types of events that people experience across all contamination sequences vary, but are similar for both happy and unhappy people, the difference between those who are generative and those who aren't has to do with the story they tell themselves as a result of the contamination sequence.

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Unhappy people dwell on the bad, the events color everything in their lives in a negative way in short, as Edwin Friedman would say, their anxiety turns a challenge into a problem. In contrast, people who are happier, who are generative have what McAdam calls a redemption sequence. Barker describes it this way. "These people find value in the pain. They learn lessons from the negatives. Instead of a crippling tragedy, they see a setback that taught me a valuable lesson.

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Same events, different interpretation. They don't see themselves merely as resilient. They feel they are better and stronger for having experienced the problem. This allows them to cope and move forward instead of being caught in the doom loop of contamination, rather than being trapped in trauma, they experience post-traumatic growth". This corresponds directly to the idea and family systems theory that pain is an opportunity for growth, suffering is a part of life, but how we frame it and how we respond to it will determine whether it is a challenge or a problem.

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Viewing pain and suffering as a challenge provides an opportunity for growth. Viewing it as a problem will get us stuck in a downward cycle of blame, anger and refusing to take responsibility for self. And as I mentioned in Episode 128, which I will post a link in the show notes, Glennon Doyle reminds us that pain is not to be chosen, but it's not to be avoided. The importance of this redemption sequence is significant. McAdam has found that eight years after a heart attack, those who interpreted some sort of benefit from that incident were in significantly better cardiac health and were less likely to have suffered another heart attack.

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The question is, what does the story that results from a redemptive sequence look like? Barker goes through six steps that you can use to write your own redemption story, I'm not going to tell you how to do that. You can read the article yourself, but I am going to break down each step from the standpoint of helping you understand how they relate to Family systems theory. The first step is to believe that you are blessed with a gift. As Christians, we believe that all people have gifts from God and God gives them to be used for the sake of the world.

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From the systems perspective, I believe that understanding your gifts is not about being self-centered. It's about being self aware, having some sense of what you're good at. What comes easily to as well as the opposite of those is important if you're going to make a difference in the world. Self-awareness is not just important in understanding how you function. It's also important in understanding how God is calling you to use the gifts with which you've been blessed. The second step is what Barker calls recognizing the suffering of others, plain and simple.

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This is empathy. Whenever you hear me use this word, I'm likely to say that Edwin Friedman thought empathy causes us to over function and enable others and their dependence. This is not the kind of empathy that I believe Barker is talking about. Healthy empathy is the ability to understand where another is coming from without trying to define them or take responsibility for them. It's being able to relate to the struggles of others without trying to fix them. This is where Friedman would agree because he would say that sympathy is good as long as we don't try to fix the situation for others, as long as we don't try to take responsibility for others.

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So in this case, sympathy and empathy are somewhat related. But I think recognizing the suffering of others comes from being able to put ourselves in their shoes, being able to use what is called cognitive empathy. The third element of the redemption story, according to Barker, is moral depth. This is where understanding the definition of self-differentiation is important. It is the ability to claim your own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. This requires moral depth.

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It requires knowing what you believe and having the conviction to stick with it in a healthy way. This doesn't mean that you are unyielding. It just means that you know who you are, what you believe and what's important to you. It also means that when there is great pressure to conform to values that are inconsistent with your own, that you are able to remain a non-anxious presence. The fourth step in writing your own redemption story is the redemption itself, this is the heart of this story.

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It's how you grew stronger, more capable, more resilient, more effective because of the challenges you faced. An important thing that I've learned is that telling your own redemption story in your family of origin can be generative in its own right. I've written in both of my books about family systems, about my parents experience. During World War Two, my dad was interned in a relocation camp in Idaho. My mom, who was born in the United States, was sent back to Japan in the 1930s and was stuck in Hiroshima until 1947.

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They both have stories of tremendous hardship and challenge, but they have a redemptive quality to them. I grew up hearing these stories and not only did they give me admiration for my parents, but in some way I felt that they became a part of who I am. I'm grateful that my children have heard these stories as well. Part of the story we tell ourselves is that we come from a family of people who persevere through hardship, and even though I haven't experienced that much hardship, it's still a part of who I am.

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And I think it's a big part of why I feel the desire to make the world a better place. What this highlights is the intergenerational nature of systems. Both good and bad can be transmitted from generation to generation. So if you are able to go through suffering and pain and get growth out of it, then that becomes a redemption story. Not just for yourself, but it enables you to share that in your family of origin and help it become a part of the story of your family.

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This can certainly be true of congregations and organizations as well who go through challenging times and come out even stronger in either case, whether it's personally or professionally, I believe the idea of the redemption story is it helps us to think about how we respond to challenge in a positive way so that when we meet challenge in the future, we are even more ready. And it also then helps us to think about how this is used to make us even more effective in making the world a better place.

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The fifth step in writing your own redemption story, according to Barker, is balancing power and love. He writes, "The two fundamental human motives are agency and communion, getting ahead and getting along too much focus on agency. And you are a narcissist, but too much focus on communion can lead to low self-esteem and depression". I love this one because it gets to the major tension in Self-differentiation, that is the tension between Self-definition and connection between being a self and being together.

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It's interesting that Barker says that too much focus on communion, that is connection or togetherness, can lead to low self-esteem and depression. This is because you will never be able to be a self. If you are always focused on connection, you will be constantly adapting to the surrounding togetherness pressure in the system. On the other hand, you may have heard me say before that self-definition without connection is narcissism. Barker is the first one that I've heard to say this outside of the family systems context, finding balance, holding the tension between self-definition and connection between power and love, as Barker put it, is what a non-anxious leader does.

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The final step in writing your own redemption story is Futuregrowth, this is about vision, this is about seeing where you're headed and this is the primary role of a leader. If you don't have a sense of where you're being called to go both as an individual and as a leader of the system, you will wander around aimlessly. Furthermore, the people you lead will get anxious. They need you to have a vision when your vision is connected to making the world a better place that is generativity.

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It creates energy both for you and for the people you lead. If you are listening to this podcast, you have likely already written your redemption story or you are in the process of writing your redemption story. Because I believe that through family systems theory, through understanding how to be a non-anxious presence, how to be self-differentiated, you are taking responsibility for yourself in a way that refuses to let a contamination sequence be the last word. That's how redemption stories are written.

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That's how non-anxious leaders grow. That's it for episode 136, I was talking to somebody this week who had recently listen to the audio book of my book, Anxious Church, Anxious People How to Lead Change in an Age of Anxiety. And he told me he was surprised that he had never heard of me before. And you can help change that by sharing this podcast, sharing my website with other people. If you know people who are trying to lead as a non-anxious presence, please share with them so that they can learn and grow, too, until next time.

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Thanks and goodbye.