The Gift of Sadness Workshop with Eric Russell

It isn't what you think it is. Sadness, that is. Perhaps it is time to talk about it differently and understand it from a slightly unconventional frame of reference, and discuss why that frame matters.

In many ways sadness is a gift, one that makes us feel, and to feel is one of the ways we express being alive and being human. Sadness can open the heart and expand what we understand about life and how to live it fully.

Being sad is an expected consequence of life today. We are in an unprecedented moment of being sad individually and collectively. Sad in the wake of the worldwide pandemic's profound impact on us all. Sad because we're in an epidemic of loneliness according to the US Surgeon General's 2023 report. Sad because we're in the middle of consequential change caused by two of the most disruptive revolutions in human history: the digital revolution and what's followed it, the AI (artificial intelligence) revolution. Sad because of threats like global warming that impact our species and threats that impact our individual welfare such as high costs of living. Sad because we don't know how to address grief in our society, so when over a million people died here in the pandemic, we don't know how to effectively grieve our losses.

Sadness is with us whether we are aware of it or not. If we're not consciously sad, we could be experiencing it unconsciously and be unaware that sad is what we're actually feeling. There are sad people all around and we encounter them constantly, although we might not recognize their condition. Sadness can often masquerade as different behaviors (e.g. anger, frustration, fear, hopelessness, etc.) in part because being sad isn't socially normative nor societally appealing.

Regardless of what our experience is, what we need to do in every possible way is to normalize being sad.

In this conversation we'll talk about:

• The Cult of Happiness: Value, Myth, Culture - You'll learn what sabotages our ability to be sad meaningfully and effectively.
• Loss: The Sadness Origin Story - You'll contextualize sadness as a normal, rational, and reasonable life experience.
• Sadness the Gift: An Unprecedented Journey - Beginning with what happened that caused a reaction of sadness, you'll discover that sadness is a path into the heart's opening.

Eric Russell has become known as a wise elder and is a master coach in practice for over 40 years with clients worldwide. His practice focuses on how to effectively move through and benefit from the experiences of loss, adversity and/or threat. Instead of resilience, his intended outcome is reorientation and beneficial growth. He is an Organizational Behaviorist (AB Brown University) and a master coach in practice for over 40 years with clients worldwide. His soon to be published book When Life Knocks You Down: Practical Guidance and Wisdom for What to Do is a much needed “how to” guide for productively navigating life’s inevitable experiences of hardship.

He is a speaker and/or workshop leader on these signature topics: Change, Loss and Wholeness; Managing Stress and Burnout; Being a Better Man; Building Better Leaders; Foundations of Well-Being; Dealing with Difficulty; Building Connections and Finding Community, and The Practice of Stillness. Organizations he’s worked with include: Office of the Governor state of Washington, Office of Financial Management Washington State, Banknorth Group (now TD Bank), National Education Association New England, TEDx - University of Paderborn Germany, Brown University, and others.

Host or Publisher Village Books