Are you locked into the same struggle day after day? Emotional pain is not a weakness. It's part of becoming a stronger and more capable leader. By studying the underlying patterns of our stresses and fears we can develop the skills to transform theses situations from a very personal threat to an opportunity to create the next level of value.

King Sisyphus was crafty and ambitious and fated for all eternity to roll a heavy rock up a steep hill only to have it roll back on him from very near the top of the hill. Sounds like entrepreneurship to me.

Everyone has a burden to carry.

One of the things I've noticed about entrepreneurs I've coached is that each seems to have a singular theme which explains most if not all of their recurring issues, problems, challenges and threats, as varied as they might seem.

The most traumatic early experiences for me were all some form of disengagement: my mother going back to work after four weeks, my baby brother arriving when I was four, the death of a friend at age seven and the divorce of my parents at eleven.

While I am getting more gracious with it while I get older, I still feel the most pain when someone important to me decides to disengage. I might intellectually understand that person's decision, but it still hurts.

We add the most value where we feel the most emotional pain.

Based on my specific pattern of emotional wounding, I have become something of an expert on the topic of disengagement. This is where I have the most empathy for the suffering of the people I meet on the journey. I've also come to appreciate that if I didn't suffer from the occasional disengagement as an opportunity to grow, I'd still suffer from something. It might as well be this one. We all have our crosses to bear.

There is a gift in the suffering and for me that gift is the opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of the people I serve, the community in which we live and the world at large. This is my driving need and it is always the answer to my core wound. The people who hire me are looking also to make a more positive impact and to do so we need to work together to solve a disengagement problem: disengaged customers, disengaged staff, disengaged investors.

I can suffer from the emotional pain of my own problems and challenges (including the ones I manufacture) or I can contribute to solving the same issues in the lives of the people I serve. Service is more meaningful and certainly more lucrative.

Getting your driving need met is the solution to your core wound.