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> Even though we normally think of grief in the context of the death of a loved one, a broadly similar reaction can occur when a close relationship is ended thr

> Even though we normally think of grief in the context of the death of a loved one, a broadly similar reaction can occur when a close relationship is ended through separation or when a person is forced to give up some aspect of life deemed to be important. When our family business died, my father exhibited a number of worrying emotions. There were numbness and disbelief that this business he had created 20-odd years ago was no longer ‘alive.’ There was some anger toward the economy, competitors, and debtors. A stronger emotion than anger was that of guilt and self-blame: he felt guilty that he had caused the failure of the business, that it could no longer be passed on to my brother, and that, as a result, he had failed not only as a businessperson, but also as a father. These feelings caused him distress and anxiety. He felt the situation was hopeless and became withdrawn and, at times, depressed. This experience is eerily similar to the failure of a business of a family member. People who have built their business over decades will go to irrational lengths to save it, even when it would be prudent to wind it up and preserve your existing wealth, and mental and physical well-being. When traditional creditors refuse to lend more, I have seen homes getting mortgaged, willingness to take on high-interest loans from dubious people and a belief that things can be fixed if they can just have a little more money and time. I think the attachment, and subsequent grief from failure, with business built over years and decades with little outside capital is significantly more than venture-backed businesses where entrepreneurs can generally share the fruits and failure with other investors/backers.

brundolf 5y ago
Most people need at least one thing in their life to put their name on which acts like an external incarnation of their self-worth. I feel this way about my side-projects. Luckily those can't "die", though they can be threatened by eg an excessive employment contract.
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  I find it’s far easier to just accept that everything is transient, and that our works and deeds are insignificant. You can’t fight entropy. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
  - rnoorda 5y ago
    Off-topic, but I remember feeling disappointed that Ozymandias was a Greek name for Ramses, probably the most famous pharaoh. There are still valuable lessons from the poem, but there was something beautiful to me about the idea of such an important leader fading into such obscurity that people don't even recognize his name.
  - rags2riches 5y ago
    I don't agree with the unstated premise that only the eternal can be meaningful that is behind statements like "nothing matters anyway". What we do and how we live is all that can matter. That which is for ever and cannot change is of no matter to us.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    I'm not passing a value judgement on whether it's a good or bad thing, I'm just saying it's a common thing in the human psyche
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >Most people need at least one thing in their life to put their name on which acts like an external incarnation of their self-worth. Might I recommend following Jesus and placing your self-worth in His Kingdom?
shreyshnaccount 5y ago
sad, but true. that's the sunken cost fallacy. and it's rooted deeply in human brains, and is tremendously hard to overcome. trying to consciously practice empathy with those effected, especially with loved ones, and telling them that they are loved goes a long way. a therapist can also help them to get over these deep rooted emotional responses. on the other hand, mindfully making prudent decisions and not surrounding oneself with yes men is something that a business owner can do. having a 'third person' set of eyes is super important, but that's a role that consultants rarely play
- blueblisters 5y ago
  > having a 'third person' set of eyes is super important, but that's a role that consultants rarely play I think there's a tendency of not trusting outsiders, especially when it comes to small/medium family-owned businesses. The prevailing wisdom being: you don't understand how this business works, I have been nurturing it, I know my customers and market. Why change things if it has been working for years? It must be the creditors and competitors who are screwing me up. Perhaps the best piece of advice for business owners is not to tie success or failure with your self-worth, and to always have an emergency exit plan for yourself even if you feel your business can endure for ages.
  - shreyshnaccount 5y ago
    that's some very sound, practical, and reasonable advice
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >that's the sunken cost fallacy It's so much deeper than just sunk cost. The business represents your pride, your purpose and your identity. A closer analogy would be a pet owner who spends thousands of dollars on surgery for a dying dog, just so it can live on in pain, rather than accepting the loss and putting it down.
  - shreyshnaccount 5y ago
    I think it's related, and I say so because I read in one of the Yuval Harari books about war vets who had lost their limbs being more likely to support said war, and he attributed it to sunken cost fallacy. seems similar to the situation to me, but I think this is a case of different opinions and I respect yours and thank you for sharing it in a constructive way.
matt89 5y ago
This may be slightly off topic, but it really resonated with me how you expanded on the definition of grief. I think a lot of people associate it mostly or solely with death. But grief, I think, is a very useful concept that can be very helpful in making sense of our emotions in hard moments in life. I was told this by a therapist when I was feeling shitty after my girlfriend broke up with me, and it was quite enlightening to get this new perspective. I think grief can be basically felt as the result of any loss. Be it loss of a loved one, breakup (loss) of a relationship, loss of your job, loss of a piece of your life.
- rnoorda 5y ago
  I'm not sure if I can completely describe this, but I have many times felt some level of grief at the loss of a what-if, a potential future. I make a choice (or someone else makes a choice) and some small part of my future feels closed off. It's a relatively small grief and doesn't compare to losing a loved one or a relationship, or even a job, but I don't feel I have a clear way to address it.
  - novosel 5y ago
    I have found that feeling described best in the Either/Or of Kierkegaard. The chapter called The Unhappiest Man. Putting aside the dramatic overtone of the piece, the temporal logic, or rather dialectical swoon of the one that is living in the future/pas(t)ivity is very poignant to me. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Either/Or#The_Unhappiest_Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Either/Or#The_Unhappiest_Man
moondistance 5y ago
I had a horrific personal experience of this grief. It took me a long time to understand it was grief. This resonated: https://twitter.com/FutureJurvetson/status/1400485361197797382?s=20 https://twitter.com/FutureJurvetson/status/14004853611977973... This also: “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson Remember, as painful as it is, "this too shall pass" All the best to all of you out there. You have my love. There should be counsellors / therapists who understand and can help.
- Heyso 5y ago
  That quote from Jamie is really nice. This seem to correlate with my own experience. I still have strong feeling for someone I lost contact with, but I am not that much affected by the lost of my dog or grandfather. I liked my grandfather but wasn't that close, and also had more than enough occasion to express my emotion at the burial. And my dog, I think, regarding to said quote from Jamie, that I expressed my love of him without restreint. I am less sure about "this too shall pass", for that one person that is still (probably) alive. For some case, there might be something more to be done. For it to heal.
- pototo666 5y ago
  My mother just passed away. This quote touches my deepest feeling.
markdjacobsen 5y ago
A few years ago, I presided over the failure of a nonprofit I'd founded. It was the most devastating experience of my life and involved all the emotions here: grief, anger, depression, self-blame, guilt, etc. I came to realize that this experience was fairly common for failed founders and business owners but almost NOBODY talked about it, and few people who hadn't been through the experience could understand. If you'll permit me to self-promote a bit, I wrote a book out of the experience called "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal" to help others walk through this grief and healing season. Here is a link where I have a lot of free excerpts. [0] The chapters are broken down in topics like Burnout, Anger, Scars, Aftershocks, Health, Perspective, Courage, etc. Here are a few lines touching on grief and the relentless drive to save a failing effort: "Burnout is really about unrequited love. No matter how much you love your quest, it does not always love you back. Often the world does not align behind your glorious sense of purpose. Whenever some new twist or turn puts your goal further beyond reach, you must burn ever brighter to compensate. You seethe at the injustice. You choke back tears of disappointment. Despite all that, you do what you have always done, which is to hold it together through the sheer force of love. Eventually, this misalignment between your passion and circumstances opens a wound in your soul." [0] https://markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/ https://markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/
- warent 5y ago
  Usually people's writing style on these topics come across as extremely pretentious, hollow broetry. I appreciate that yours seems really authentic. Ordered a paperback copy!
  - markdjacobsen 5y ago
    Thanks! That’s largely what I was trying to write in opposition to. You find a lot of “here’s how I failed my way to success, and you can too” pieces. That’s not particularly helpful to someone who feels like their life is coming apart.
- patrickwalton 5y ago
  > It was the most devastating experience of my life and involved all the emotions here: grief, anger, depression, self-blame, guilt, etc. I came to realize that this experience was fairly common for failed founders and business owners but almost NOBODY talked about it, and few people who hadn't been through the experience could understand. Lessons From a Failed Startup is doing a good job helping people talk about this more: https://open.spotify.com/show/7IE4r9wIpCYbwvwAOcltq4?si=Txqa8BmeQRCX-6EaQ6rreg&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/show/7IE4r9wIpCYbwvwAOcltq4?si=Txqa...
ignoramous 5y ago
Rejection and lack of recognition, for any entrepreneur, likely hits as hard as failure: Death by a thousand paper-cuts, as it were. > ...where entrepreneurs can generally share the fruits and failure with other investors/backers. In practice, this isn't true though, is it? Venture money brings with it an inordinate amount of pressure to execute. Some of the pressure might even be at odds with how an entrepreneur wishes to run their firm, and often they may be forced to make difficult decisions under duress. And when that growth slows, Venture Capitalists are the first ones out the door and treat the company worse than dead-weight. An experience like that might be on-par with the grief any business owner experiences when the writing is on the wall. Ref: The power law in Venture Capital https://archive.is/WK96N https://archive.is/WK96N

brundolf 5y ago

Most people need at least one thing in their life to put their name on which acts like an external incarnation of their self-worth. I feel this way about my side-projects. Luckily those can't "die", though they can be threatened by eg an excessive employment contract.

madaxe_again 5y ago
I find it’s far easier to just accept that everything is transient, and that our works and deeds are insignificant. You can’t fight entropy. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
- rnoorda 5y ago
  Off-topic, but I remember feeling disappointed that Ozymandias was a Greek name for Ramses, probably the most famous pharaoh. There are still valuable lessons from the poem, but there was something beautiful to me about the idea of such an important leader fading into such obscurity that people don't even recognize his name.
- rags2riches 5y ago
  I don't agree with the unstated premise that only the eternal can be meaningful that is behind statements like "nothing matters anyway". What we do and how we live is all that can matter. That which is for ever and cannot change is of no matter to us.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I'm not passing a value judgement on whether it's a good or bad thing, I'm just saying it's a common thing in the human psyche
geoduck14 5y ago
>Most people need at least one thing in their life to put their name on which acts like an external incarnation of their self-worth. Might I recommend following Jesus and placing your self-worth in His Kingdom?

shreyshnaccount 5y ago

sad, but true. that's the sunken cost fallacy. and it's rooted deeply in human brains, and is tremendously hard to overcome. trying to consciously practice empathy with those effected, especially with loved ones, and telling them that they are loved goes a long way. a therapist can also help them to get over these deep rooted emotional responses. on the other hand, mindfully making prudent decisions and not surrounding oneself with yes men is something that a business owner can do. having a 'third person' set of eyes is super important, but that's a role that consultants rarely play

blueblisters 5y ago
> having a 'third person' set of eyes is super important, but that's a role that consultants rarely play I think there's a tendency of not trusting outsiders, especially when it comes to small/medium family-owned businesses. The prevailing wisdom being: you don't understand how this business works, I have been nurturing it, I know my customers and market. Why change things if it has been working for years? It must be the creditors and competitors who are screwing me up. Perhaps the best piece of advice for business owners is not to tie success or failure with your self-worth, and to always have an emergency exit plan for yourself even if you feel your business can endure for ages.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  that's some very sound, practical, and reasonable advice
AussieWog93 5y ago
>that's the sunken cost fallacy It's so much deeper than just sunk cost. The business represents your pride, your purpose and your identity. A closer analogy would be a pet owner who spends thousands of dollars on surgery for a dying dog, just so it can live on in pain, rather than accepting the loss and putting it down.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  I think it's related, and I say so because I read in one of the Yuval Harari books about war vets who had lost their limbs being more likely to support said war, and he attributed it to sunken cost fallacy. seems similar to the situation to me, but I think this is a case of different opinions and I respect yours and thank you for sharing it in a constructive way.

matt89 5y ago

This may be slightly off topic, but it really resonated with me how you expanded on the definition of grief. I think a lot of people associate it mostly or solely with death. But grief, I think, is a very useful concept that can be very helpful in making sense of our emotions in hard moments in life. I was told this by a therapist when I was feeling shitty after my girlfriend broke up with me, and it was quite enlightening to get this new perspective. I think grief can be basically felt as the result of any loss. Be it loss of a loved one, breakup (loss) of a relationship, loss of your job, loss of a piece of your life.

rnoorda 5y ago
I'm not sure if I can completely describe this, but I have many times felt some level of grief at the loss of a what-if, a potential future. I make a choice (or someone else makes a choice) and some small part of my future feels closed off. It's a relatively small grief and doesn't compare to losing a loved one or a relationship, or even a job, but I don't feel I have a clear way to address it.
- novosel 5y ago
  I have found that feeling described best in the Either/Or of Kierkegaard. The chapter called The Unhappiest Man. Putting aside the dramatic overtone of the piece, the temporal logic, or rather dialectical swoon of the one that is living in the future/pas(t)ivity is very poignant to me. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Either/Or#The_Unhappiest_Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Either/Or#The_Unhappiest_Man

moondistance 5y ago

I had a horrific personal experience of this grief. It took me a long time to understand it was grief. This resonated: https://twitter.com/FutureJurvetson/status/1400485361197797382?s=20 https://twitter.com/FutureJurvetson/status/14004853611977973... This also: “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” - Jamie Anderson Remember, as painful as it is, "this too shall pass" All the best to all of you out there. You have my love. There should be counsellors / therapists who understand and can help.

Heyso 5y ago
That quote from Jamie is really nice. This seem to correlate with my own experience. I still have strong feeling for someone I lost contact with, but I am not that much affected by the lost of my dog or grandfather. I liked my grandfather but wasn't that close, and also had more than enough occasion to express my emotion at the burial. And my dog, I think, regarding to said quote from Jamie, that I expressed my love of him without restreint. I am less sure about "this too shall pass", for that one person that is still (probably) alive. For some case, there might be something more to be done. For it to heal.
pototo666 5y ago
My mother just passed away. This quote touches my deepest feeling.

markdjacobsen 5y ago

A few years ago, I presided over the failure of a nonprofit I'd founded. It was the most devastating experience of my life and involved all the emotions here: grief, anger, depression, self-blame, guilt, etc. I came to realize that this experience was fairly common for failed founders and business owners but almost NOBODY talked about it, and few people who hadn't been through the experience could understand. If you'll permit me to self-promote a bit, I wrote a book out of the experience called "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal" to help others walk through this grief and healing season. Here is a link where I have a lot of free excerpts. [0] The chapters are broken down in topics like Burnout, Anger, Scars, Aftershocks, Health, Perspective, Courage, etc. Here are a few lines touching on grief and the relentless drive to save a failing effort: "Burnout is really about unrequited love. No matter how much you love your quest, it does not always love you back. Often the world does not align behind your glorious sense of purpose. Whenever some new twist or turn puts your goal further beyond reach, you must burn ever brighter to compensate. You seethe at the injustice. You choke back tears of disappointment. Despite all that, you do what you have always done, which is to hold it together through the sheer force of love. Eventually, this misalignment between your passion and circumstances opens a wound in your soul." [0] https://markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/ https://markdjacobsen.com/eating-glass/

warent 5y ago
Usually people's writing style on these topics come across as extremely pretentious, hollow broetry. I appreciate that yours seems really authentic. Ordered a paperback copy!
- markdjacobsen 5y ago
  Thanks! That’s largely what I was trying to write in opposition to. You find a lot of “here’s how I failed my way to success, and you can too” pieces. That’s not particularly helpful to someone who feels like their life is coming apart.
patrickwalton 5y ago
> It was the most devastating experience of my life and involved all the emotions here: grief, anger, depression, self-blame, guilt, etc. I came to realize that this experience was fairly common for failed founders and business owners but almost NOBODY talked about it, and few people who hadn't been through the experience could understand. Lessons From a Failed Startup is doing a good job helping people talk about this more: https://open.spotify.com/show/7IE4r9wIpCYbwvwAOcltq4?si=Txqa8BmeQRCX-6EaQ6rreg&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/show/7IE4r9wIpCYbwvwAOcltq4?si=Txqa...

ignoramous 5y ago

Rejection and lack of recognition, for any entrepreneur, likely hits as hard as failure: Death by a thousand paper-cuts, as it were. > ...where entrepreneurs can generally share the fruits and failure with other investors/backers. In practice, this isn't true though, is it? Venture money brings with it an inordinate amount of pressure to execute. Some of the pressure might even be at odds with how an entrepreneur wishes to run their firm, and often they may be forced to make difficult decisions under duress. And when that growth slows, Venture Capitalists are the first ones out the door and treat the company worse than dead-weight. An experience like that might be on-par with the grief any business owner experiences when the writing is on the wall. Ref: The power law in Venture Capital https://archive.is/WK96N https://archive.is/WK96N