Moral Injury: When the Mind & Soul Suffers, The Body Cries Out
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this video put out on YouTube by this young brilliant MIT trained Neurosurgeon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LUF8GmbFU
He is walking in the mountains and just talking about his life and learnings. I had to watch it twice. There is incredible advice about the power of good habits in health and recovery. About what the commonality is in patients of his who recover or even those who recover right before the planned surgery. Things like:
Sleep at least 8 hours a day, have a good diet of low salt and mainly plant-based foods, don’t smoke or drink much, have a good social network, exercise regularly & sweat regularly by going to sauna, and manage stress well.
But what really stuck in my mind was the idea of moral injury. Despite the prestige, the money and status, when his work started to feel meaningless, he was literally dying inside.
I’ve felt like this many times in my life, especially during my career. The time in Vancouver right before I moved to San Francisco in 1998. Even though everything was fine, and I was fed and got to just chill out at home, I felt stuck. I felt like I was rotting mentally and physically.
The next most significant time was the final year of my time at 500 Startups. I felt like I wasn’t learning anything new, working with folks I either didn’t like or stopped respecting and just going through the motions. I felt like I was a trapped animal. Every work day was a hell of continual indignity. Living with dread every Sunday and looking forward to the weekend. This is, sadly, the life of most working people.
We see the results of this everywhere around us. When you are unhappy, your body acts out. You get sick more frequently. And when this happens, we tend to mis-adapt, instead of facing the core issue, we end up doing self destructive things: drugs, alcohol, over-eating, gambling and for me, over traveling and over-shopping books. This is the way we distract ourselves from dealing with the problem. A form of cowardice, a form of hiding but you can’t hide forever.
Good morale is important in countries, in armies, in companies and in each individual. You can feel the morale and mood the minute you walk into any office.
How do you get good morale and fight off moral injury? Work on things that have meaning to you. Do interesting work and work with awesome people. Have a bigger mission. Do things that we feel matters in our lives and those of my families and our greater communities. If you don’t, well your body will tell you. You will suffer in both mind and body.