WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. Today we’re flying into San Diego, California to chat with coach, scholar, pastor and speaker, Reverend Dr. Seth David Clark. Seth has spent over 20 years working where leadership gets complicated. He’s the lead pastor of the First Baptist Church of National City, a multicultural and majority refugee congregation in Southern California. He also served as a hospice chaplain during the COVID-19 pandemic, sitting with dying patients and their families, and that work changed the way he thinks about everything. Death matters because life matters. Seth calls this approach morality-aware leadership: the practice of leading with the knowledge that your time is finite, using that knowledge to make better decisions, build stronger teams, and face loss as well as change with greater courage and resilience, and leave something worth leaving. Seth is working on his PhD in leadership studies at the University of San Diego and is researching what happens to powerful leaders when they retire, how they rebuild identity, what they do with their influence, and whether relevance survives the title. His scholarly work centers on leadership science but isn’t afraid of philosophy and theology, from Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Machiavelli’s realism to Thomas Merton’s true self-mystical theology. In 2025, he founded Life, Death, and Leadership (LDL), an executive coaching and leadership development practice. Seth’s main assertion to leaders is that if you befriend death, you can befriend any hardship or loss. Leaders who do this work stop confusing fear with strategy, and it shows in how they decide what to finish. Team, as you can imagine, this is a very heavy topic, but Seth brings such clarity that it’s an inspiring conversation to say the least. This is another episode that I know you don’t want to miss. 

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Mortality, loss, regret, identity, perspective; these are five words that we’re reviewing today and looking at it from two sides of the same life. So, what do I mean by that? Well, we’re all business leaders as well as human beings. So, we know the tension; at work, we pretend time is abundant and controllable. At home, we know time is scarce as well as uncontrollable many times and we carry professional regrets and personal ones. Our identity shifts between the boardroom and the bedroom, and our perspective, but we’ve earned both; they came from both sides. And the hard truth is we are both; we’re not two different people, we’re one person living two versions of that same finite life. So, our guest today is someone who studies these five things and sits beside leaders and everyday humans who can no longer separate these two elements, researcher, pastor, Seth Clark. Seth, welcome to the ET project; this is going to be an interesting conversation, I think.

1. SETH CLARK: Sure. Thanks for having me, Wayne. I’m excited to kind of dive in and, honestly, maybe even a little bit scared because whenever we talk about big life and death things, a lot of feelings come up, even for me, even though I’ve been talking about this stuff for a few years now. So yeah, let’s get into it. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Now, before we dive into it, you were just talking before we hit record that you did a study recently on theology, and you took two specific periods and different aspects of different religions, if you like, or beliefs. What are you doing at the moment?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, so that’s… it’s a comparative theology course on St. Bonaventure from northern Italy about 800 years ago. And then shortly before him was this man named Jinul, who’s a Buddhist monk, Mahayana Buddhism in Korea. And so, two very different kinds of perspectives on the world, but both, I think, are trying to understand what it means to find enlightenment. In the Christian system, finding enlightenment means union with God; in the Buddhist system, it means the awakening, the Buddha nature. 

[00:05:00]

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, Jinul would talk about how we all have the Buddha nature, but it’s like frost in the morning; the sunshine is there, the Buddha nature is there, but the frost has to melt, so, take some cultivation, take some melting. So, some pretty fascinating stuff, trying to dig into that. And then at the end of the month, I’m also presenting at a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the United States on Thomas Merton, another monk from the 20th century, and Machiavelli, Niccolo Machiavelli, it’s called the Fox and the Monk. So, what does it mean to be both crude and your true self? So doing a lot of fun stuff and all kind of in this umbrella of life and death in leadership. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s a great segue into mortality. So, let’s look at mortality as a starting point. I mean, from your research and your counseling, what do you find that people most often get wrong about mortality?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think what we get wrong is just kind of our feelings about it. I don’t want to shame anybody for having feelings, but it’s the negative feelings kind of get in the way of like accepting reality the way it is. And then I think talking about Christianity and

Buddhism, both of them are very keen on trying to figure out what truth is. And part of the truth of our life is that it doesn’t last forever. And so, what we get wrong is we just kind of avoid it. It’s not that we have like wrong notions per se, but we just try to like push it off because we think, well, that’s hard to deal with, or oh, that’s a few years or a few decades down the line. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yes. What about the subject of immortality? Do you find people cling to this concept in any way? Like, I was thinking, how would I describe immortality if I wanted to leave a legacy and a statue came to mind, if I built a statue of myself and people could see it decades, centuries later. Do you find many people that cling to that hope?

1. SETH CLARK: I think so. There’s actually some research too about… it’s called Terror Management Theory, and so, part of it is like we have our own immortality project. And I’m actually… I just submitted a book called that, Your Immortality Project, we’ll see if it gets picked up. But yeah… and it’s about that… underneath all of these things that we’re doing because somewhere down there in our conscious we know we don’t have forever, but we want our legacy to outlast us. And I think that’s part of human nature, so there’s nothing necessarily like wrong with it, I think the problem is if it’s happening to us instead of us working with it, where we’re trying to have big things and we’re trying to cling on to things in a way that doesn’t actually treat reality the way it is, but trying to hold on to it and force it to happen in a way that’s… and actually in a strange way, harming our legacy, because, you know, we didn’t leave when you’re on top, we left maybe 10, 20 years too late or we went out in a way that kind of burned some bridges on the way out, that kind of thing.

WAYNE BROWN: Hmm. And from a religious point of view, I guess, many people look at religion as a means of securing immortality to some degree I’d say. How do you address that?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think… so, when I work, you know, in like a leadership coaching capacity, I work with someone where they are… actually when I was a hospice chaplain, my job as a hospice chaplain was to come alongside someone in their own spiritual path, I’m an ordained Christian minister, so I have my own ideas about how things are or aren’t and all this. But my job was to help them on their path. And even now as a leadership coach, it’s not my job to lead a company, it’s not my job to be some senior VP here or there, it’s my job to help them on their own journey. And so, when religion comes, and immortality comes, well, it’s a matter of how does that perspective work in your own life. So, from the Christian perspective there’s heaven and there’s hell and there’s a new heaven, new earth, and there’s lots of different kinds of theology around that. Some people say more and more like everyone, it’s called universal reconciliation, everyone will be reconciled to God, some people say there actually isn’t immortality, the wicked they will be annihilated and all this stuff. So even within a faith tradition, there’s different ideas. 

[00:10:00] 

1. SETH CLARK: And then, of course, in Eastern religions and Hinduism, it’s all a cycle of samsara, it lasts forever, rebirth after rebirth. And in Buddhist tradition, you can break out of that through awakening, through enlightenment, in Nirvana. And so, but there’s billions of Hindus and Buddhists, and so, there’s lots of different ways of thinking about that. But yeah, in some ways, religion is a way to answer that question, like, what is death about? Every religion has an answer to that question. And sometimes they seem mutually exclusive, but they all are trying to answer that question because that’s a fundamental reality of this thing called life. So, whether it’s rebirth or whether it’s resurrection or whatever else it might be, that’s at the core of these systems of thought. 

WAYNE BROWN: Let’s pivot a little bit from that mortality subject to talking about the other words that sort of happened prior to that final moment. So, we mentioned loss, I’m thinking about, as a leader, if you’re talking with leaders, do they ever grieve loss in a specific way? I mean, it could be a very broad question I realize, but do you come across leaders or even just individuals who are grieving a sense of loss around something? 

1. SETH CLARK: Again, I learned so much as a hospice chaplain, I learned that there’s no wrong way to grieve. And so, if you take that into the C-suite, it gives a lot of liberty because there’s a lot of loss in business. There’s a merger that didn’t happen or there’s a merger that did happen and you lose your identity as an individual within that organization or the organization itself loses its identity, and loss, loss, loss. It’s more than just profit and loss, there’s loss of identity, loss of… you know, the way things used to be. And as you go through that as a leader, some people, you know, they’re pretty resilient, they just kind of… or they acknowledge the emotions that they have and just keep working. But others, I think, they push it down more and that makes it harder, because they’re not acknowledging how it actually is. And then two, if you’re a leader, like you’re responsible for people in your organization, the organization itself, and if you don’t kind of name the loss in a way that’s human, it can be harder to kind of get through that because it can be this thing under the surface that just lasts and it won’t go away. And maybe time will heal it, but oftentimes it doesn’t, it just kind of festers. And so, yeah, there’s different approaches. And there’s no wrong approach per se, but I think the more that’s kind of dealt with internally and then as a community in that organization, the better off I think people will be, because work becomes a place that’s relatively safe as opposed to a place where there’s that fear of more loss that it’s going to happen again, or this fear that if you talk about the loss, that you’ll be reprimanded somehow. So yeah, I think, yeah, there’s a lot of ways of approaching it, and I’ve seen a few. 

WAYNE BROWN: We hear people say, throw yourself into work, and it serves as some form of distraction to that loss. I’ve often thought, heck, that’s really bad advice, because all that you’re doing is you are, yes, you may be creating a distraction, but you’re not really dealing with the issue at hand. And as you said, it touches under the surface. And for leaders, it materializes in your behavior, it materializes in your actions, and the people around you can see that clearly as well. And so, I’m just wondering, how would a leader best cope with the loss, whatever that loss might be, let’s say it’s a loss of a loved one, in that work context, because we sort of have work and our boss expects us to do the job and cope with whatever’s going on. How should we approach our losses within that work context? I’m thinking back and I can’t think of any formal methodology of how we should approach it. 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, thanks for that. And I would say, should feels like a tall order, I think I would offer different perspectives, because there’s a lot of different people with different needs and things. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah.

[00:15:00] 

1. SETH CLARK: But I would say that because we all have responsibilities in the workplace, sometimes even though it’s hard, and even though it is less humane than we might ideally want it to be, sometimes we have to wall off the work part of ourselves and do that healing work outside of the office. Because depending on your office, and depending on your supervisor, your manager, your CEO, whoever it is, there might be space to have that emotional life inside the walls of your office building and you might not have that. But I would say that for the leader who is in charge of keeping workers on task, but also like realizing they’re human, I would offer to them like, okay, let’s make sure that the job gets done, of course, but not in a way that belittles, or undermines, or ignores the fact this person is grieving, this person is bereaving something like a loss of a loved one. And you don’t learn that stuff in business school. But for those who are going through it, and maybe they don’t have that kind of opportunity to be the one to give that open space, I would say like, there’s plenty of people out there, whether it’s a coach, or a therapist, or a religious leader, or a friend, or someone in your family, people there who can come alongside you, and help you through that process. And maybe you do need to put your walls up at work. But if possible, if you have the freedom to do so, try to let that guard down a little bit, because even in that vulnerability, there’s more cohesion in the organization. And there is more of just of like a human experience, which I think that’s what life is about, having real human experiences. If we’re shoving part of ourselves down over and over and over again, then we become more like bots, and less like the humans that we are. And so, allowing for at least some of that, keeping professional and whatever, as much as possible. Allowing for some of that, I think, is beautiful. And it’s very scary for a lot of people, that vulnerability, but I would say, give it a go if you can. 

WAYNE BROWN: And I guess from a leader’s perspective, they also need to be cognizant that their team, at times, will also be going through a similar thing. And they need to provide that space, or provide that environment where, as you said, it can serve us, it can play a role. Is it more like if I’m the leader, and I know that one of my team is suffering, is it a case of just being empathetic? Or should I be doing something additional to try and support?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah. Part of it depends on the organizational structure, if you have a good HR team, or if it’s a big company, you might even have some sort of grief support network or something. But assuming it’s a small to medium-sized business, you’re probably not going to have too much of that. But certainly empathetic, and I would say, open and honest, and inviting. But also, not forcing, if someone is grieving, you don’t want to force them to be honest with you, especially if you’re supervising them, because there’s that power dynamic. But seeing them, noting that you see them, say, hey, I’m noticing that things just have been heavy, because there was this loss. The loss in the team, the loss in the individual’s life, I’m noticing that, and I would like to be a conversation partner in how to best support you in this. Offering support, but not necessarily handing down some sort of edict, like, okay, the toxic positivity that they talk about. So, like, okay, your goal this week is to write 10 happy emails to your clients or whatever. These things that we make up to force us to be happy when really it’s not dealing with the root of the issue. But yeah, I would say a lot of it is kind of reading the room, which is, again, not something you learn in business school, but something that you kind of foster. Good leaders are… that’s one of the things that they can do, is they can read the room and respond appropriately. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. We touched on mortality and well, let’s now look at regret, this is probably something that I come across a lot with my older clients, myself included in some cases. 

[00:20:00]

WAYNE BROWN: When you are doing research around regret, do you see specific things occur or pop up that tend to be common regrets? Is there such a thing? 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think… it’s similar to what we were talking about before, oftentimes the regrets for later in life are things having to do with, I guess, what makes us human, those things that are part of our human flourishing. Our ancient forefathers, they were in these tribes, and tribes were what they lived and died by. And today our tribes are a lot more loosely knit, shall we say, family is not as tightly knit as it once was, in some cultures more than others, still of course, but less and less so across the globe. But it’s part of our DNA, I think, to want to have those close relationships. And whether it’s the family, the blood family, or what some people call found family, those are the things that kind of get missed along the way, and then later in life people regret that. And then too, even there’s health outcomes that change based on how many friends you have in your life, an older person who has a lot of robust friendships still, they are better set up for long-term health. And then I was just seeing the other day, there’s studies for grandparents; grandparents that help their grandkids with homework are less likely to have dementia. So, the way that we help people out, the way that we are still investing in others can be good. And so, there are regrets. And for most of us, it’s not too late, because there are still people who want to be our friends, there are still people who are our family, yeah. 

WAYNE BROWN: If we took that to a leadership or from a leadership perspective, regrets are often seen as maybe we didn’t behave properly as a leader, I wish I was more open, whatever. Is there a way that we can marry what you just said when it comes to the individual and family and that nucleus, can we bring that into the workplace?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah. I would say that that need for friendship doesn’t stop as soon as you take the train or take your car to the office or you turn on your computer for a Zoom call, we still crave relationships and I think that’s a healthy part of life as humans. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, said that we’re social animals, it’s part of who we are. And so, fostering those friendships, even now, it might not have been good in the past, but like, you can’t change the past, the past is gone, all you have is the present, because the future is also not guaranteed. And so, what are the relationships that you could have now if only you chose to spend more time on those. So, those might be people at work. Hopefully, there are people at work that you could. Those might even be clients, sometimes clients can become good friends. It might be colleagues who are maybe at a similar level in their company, but it’s a different company, that kind of thing. But like fostering those work relationships I think would be helpful. And then beyond that, too, I would say, like, we’ve moved on from mortality, but it’s always lingering. If you think about how your life is finite, hopefully it clarifies your values. And so, maybe you didn’t live according to your values in the past, maybe you did not lead according to your values in the past, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start today. Today is the day that you can align your behavior with what you say and what you think you really want to be about. And the more people are able to do that, even late in career, the better off they’ll be. And forgiving themselves for whatever past things they did, that self-compassion, that self-forgiveness is a huge part of it. Because we all make blunders, some bigger than others, but we all make blunders and if we can’t live with our former selves, well, who can we live with? I am all I got at the end of the day, other than the people around me, but I’m the only one inside this skin. So, I think we all acknowledge that and be befriend ourselves too. 

WAYNE BROWN: From a leader’s perspective, I often use the phrase, stop doing and start being, you know, to your point, we really are our own worst enemy sometimes. 

[00:25:00]

WAYNE BROWN: And I’m curious, what’s the impact when we go through life and we start to do our reflections and get a little bit older and we surface all of these regrets? What does that do to us biologically and psychologically? 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I mean, there’s research that says that there’s like this U-shaped curve. So, you start off in your 20s and you’re very happy and then mid-life with your kind of mid-career, you got kids, they come to baseball or soccer or school pageants, whatever, and then… so that’s tough and there’s less happiness there. And then it goes up, it goes up again. And I think there’s this chance though that at the same time, even if though it could go up, if we hold onto those regrets too hard, the U-shape won’t become a U, it’ll be more, I guess, a J. And that’s a problem. So, one thing that maturity often does for people, but not always, is it allows them to hold on to things more loosely, right? So, those regrets, those desires they had in the past, those big goals and achievements that they define themselves by. And their regrets are the things that they’re still kind of holding on to, in a sense. And so, I would say that the people who do hold on to those regrets they’re more sad, there is a lot of what they call geriatric depression that often is related to holding onto those regrets more tightly. So, there’s this gift of wisdom that age often offers, but it’s still a gift that you have to kind of take hold of. And so, the people who don’t have this wisdom have just kind of a sadder existence and it really is unfortunate. But the people who take this gift of wisdom, and it’s interesting you take the gift by releasing some of these regrets and some of the past selves, the past identities. And then you can move into whatever is next and what some people call the golden years. And they’re golden not because the opportunities are better and not because your body is as fit as it ever was, but because you have that perspective that age gives. 

WAYNE BROWN: We’re talking about regret and loss but if we’re on our last way of our journey and we think about the impact of taking that regret to our grave virtually, is there a way that we can release these things so that we do go to the end of our lives somehow free?

1. SETH CLARK: Well, we were talking about religion earlier, and I think different religions offer different spiritual practices. And now there’s many more people who are spiritual and not religious and things like that who are picking and choosing, so I don’t want to be prescriptive about this, but these practices oftentimes are practices of release. So, in Christianity, there’s what’s called a centering prayer, and that’s one of my practices. And so, for 20 minutes or so, you have a word and this word is not the prayer word necessarily, it’s not like something you’re praying, but it’s a word to remind you to surrender to God. And so, what is surrender? It’s releasing, it’s releasing all these regrets, it’s releasing the judgment, the desires, it’s releasing. In Buddhism, it’s all about letting go, like that’s the whole thing, for Buddhists everything is emptiness. And so, why are you holding on to something when there’s nothing really there? And then for the Hindus, a lot of yoga, what do you do? You end with a pose that’s like a death pose, to remind you in this physical way that this is all to be let go of. And then other traditions, of course, too. But there are these practices that we can incorporate into our life that help us, even if it’s a slow process, because it is, to release more, to not hold on so tightly. And some philosophies, like it’s still okay to hold on to some things, but in others, let go of everything.

[00:30:00] 

1. SETH CLARK: But I think we all have the opportunity to just hold on a little bit less, and these practices, I think are a big part of that. 

WAYNE BROWN: Would meditation help in that regard as well, if you use the meditation for that purpose? 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think so. There’s different kinds of meditation of course and I’m expert in all of them, but I think all meditation if done according to the way that I’m understanding it, is a way to see reality as it is and to be less kind of clinging to it. Clinging to the thing I want or I need or clinging to judgment or whatever it might be. And so, these different meditation practices are for sure ways of helping you release, yeah. 

WAYNE BROWN: Right. So, it sounds like if somebody comes to you for a… oh, I’m looking for counseling, there’s a lot of tools or a lot of methods available that can help people overcome some of these challenges that they’re facing throughout their life. 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah. So, for the people who are not as interested in religion, they’ve also done like more kind of empirical scientific research on some of this and they have what’s called mindfulness-based stress reduction, that’s a kind of meditation practice that people can do. And you don’t have to have any sort of the spiritual elements of it, but there’s still this benefit of release and calming your nervous system down and it’d be really beneficial. 

WAYNE BROWN: I did a couple of modules on that myself; I’d recommend it actually, it’s a very useful practice as well. Let’s now transition across to identity because… I want to make sure we cover the five words, but identity from the perspective of a fracturing, if you like, that happens after the loss or after the regret. Our identity is such an important component that we probably don’t see in this light many times. When somebody comes to you, how do you identify if they’re suffering from a loss of identity or they’re suffering as a result of their identity being somehow distorted?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think, a lot of questions, of course, but some of those questions are basically around this framework of what do you value, what do you consider as you self-construct who you are. Some people don’t like this understanding of self-construct, so another way of talking about it is, how do you see yourself? And what are the lenses you use to see yourself? And so, one thing I think about is who we present ourselves as, who we identify as in workplace might be different than at the local restaurant or the club or the golf club or the yacht club, whatever it might be, or a church or a synagogue or any of those places. How we present ourselves, that’s part of our identity, and our identity might be different in different places, but they’re all of a piece. And so, when there’s a main part of that identity that has changed, that’s often a good indication that people are having difficulties with understanding who they are in this concept of identity. And for most people, so much of their identity, especially leaders, high-functioning people, most of their identity is wrapped up in their work, in their role, in their title. And so, when they are going through a transition where that changes in a way that they didn’t expect or maybe they did expect, but they weren’t necessarily looking forward to, or even sometimes they were looking forward to it, like, let’s say retirement, they’re looking forward to retirement, but then after the fact, they’re like, wait, I have all this time on my hands, no one is doing what I say anymore, and what do I do with myself? Right? 

WAYNE BROWN: We hear about this all the time, we hear about people who retire and all of a sudden, they’re feeling a sense of loss, they’re going through this headache. And many people, they look forward to retirement for so long in their careers, and then they retire and two years later, they’re no longer with us type of thing. It can be such a huge element that I think we underestimate many times.

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah. And there has been some research on this, of course, and people use different things to kind of help reconstruct their identity. Maybe they still have part of that working life, they’ll sit on a board or they’ll do fractional work or part-time work, or maybe they’ll pour into volunteering with that same kind of work. 

[00:35:00] 

1. SETH CLARK: Or some people just move into kind of more of a leisure mode, so, they’re just at the golf course every day or they’re sailing every day or going to casinos every day, whatever it might be. And some people might dive more into their spiritual life or more into their family life and they help out with their grandkids. There’s different ways that people kind of shift, but the problem for many people is they don’t know what they want to shift to or they don’t have opportunities they wish they had, or some of them they’re just looking backwards and they just can’t move to whatever is next. And if I’m sitting with a client who is going through that, I’m going to try to like listen and show care while also in kind of interrogating like, what is it about that past self that was so special? And do you really need to hold on so tightly to those things that made that past self so special? Because whatever you have in the moment is different, but there’s probably something really beautiful there too. Now, that will probably take a few sections to get to and I try not to lead people too much. But if I were leading someone, it would be in that direction, just kind of what we were talking about earlier, the loss and the things, how do we not hold on so tightly? Because our identities are tightly held, it’s something we like project to the world. And so, if we don’t have that, we feel more vulnerable and it can be tough for sure.

WAYNE BROWN: There is two words that often get linked together; one is authentic or authenticity and the other is identity. And when I think about individuals, and to some extent myself included, we have different identities at work than we do at home. And therefore, our authenticity may be different in the way that we behave in those two locations as well. And I’m wondering if that’s part of the loss that we feel is that we’re… we feel like we’ve given up a part of us when we step away from the office world or the corporate environment or the entrepreneurial life. 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah.

WAYNE BROWN: We feel like part of us is no longer authentic and we’re living this life that we haven’t planned for or we haven’t experienced, I’m just wondering if that could be something else altogether. 

1. SETH CLARK: I think so, yeah, because who we are in these different circumstances is different, because the context is different, the causes and the conditions are different, our role models for what we could or should be like are different, all of these things. And so, when we no longer have that context to step into and become that person that we probably liked, we liked who we were in that role and position with that identity, that’s tough because we’re leaving something nice and going to something else, which might be nice, but doesn’t have that full breadth of what we once had. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah.

1. SETH CLARK: And yeah, then so it really can be hard because it… we talked about grief earlier, you can grieve any loss, it’s not just grieving the loss of a loved one, all loss can be grieved, and in some ways, probably should be grieved in a way that like allows for some restoration. But it’s kind of a sticky wicket, if you will, because most people when they retire, they are done and then what’s next, that’s kind of the second to last big transition and then the last one is probably dying. And so, there’s also that kind of looming, it’s like, I like who I was, I don’t like what’s coming. 

WAYNE BROWN: When we think about grief, I’ve often heard it said that it’s important that we actually learn to grieve and to go through that process, not to try and avoid the process. Is that your experience as well that it’s more important that we don’t try and bypass the loss or the regret or the grieving? 

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, I think so. You know, there’s a saying that the body keeps the score, because a lot of times when we just move past it, it’s our mind, it’s our prefrontal cortex that’s moving past it. But you have an amygdala, you still have a nervous system that has been coded to feel pain to. And so, it also doesn’t really keep up in the same way as your mind might. And so, yeah, if you’re not processing kind of more holistically, it probably will come up again in a way that just isn’t healthy. And if we’re interested in productivity, it’s probably also not productive. And if we’re interested in human flourishing, it’s probably not in accordance with the kind of life you want as a flourishing human, yeah. 

[00:40:00]

WAYNE BROWN: Right. Well, the final word, Seth, is perspective. So, let’s bring some perspective to this whole discussion. I mean, we’ve been talking about mortality, loss, regret, identity; how do we weave perspective into this? I mean, what does it really even mean? 

1. SETH CLARK: Perspective, the Latin word there is kind of to see. So, I think it’s like, what are we seeing? What are we seeing? And I think we can take these different vantage points and see from these different perspectives, if you will. And I think that by holding these multiple perspectives, we get a richer understanding of the thing we’re looking at. If you’re on the side of the mountain and you’re looking at the valley, I was just in Yosemite last week, so I’m thinking about beautiful valleys. So, from one side of the mountain, you see this beautiful valley, but there’s this other side of the valley on the other mountain, and that’s a different look, and so there’s these different perspectives. And what’s in the middle might be beautiful or it might not be. But I think holding all of them is getting closer to the reality. So, is the reality that loss has happened? Yes. So, hold that perspective. Is the reality that there’s something good happening now even still? Well, probably yes, you’re still breathing. Is there the perspective of like, you are breathing now, but you won’t be always, someday you will take that last breath, yes, there’s that too.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah.

1. SETH CLARK: And so, I think that the best perspective is to, from my vantage point if you will, is to hold as many as possible in order to really see the valley, see the mountain sides as broadly as possible. And then not to let the ones that are harmful really kind of win the day, allow the ones that have more beauty, have more life, allow those to be the ones that you foster. You don’t foster mortality awareness because you want to be kind of morose, you have that just as a way to help you live more truly to who you are and who you want to be. 

WAYNE BROWN: Seth, where can others connect with you or follow what you’re doing and maybe read about some of the stuff you’ve written?

1. SETH CLARK: Yeah, thanks. So, kind of my one stop shop is my website, sethdavidclark.com, I just redid it, I vibe coded it, which I hadn’t vibe coded a website before, but that’s the thing now and I did mine. So sethdavidclark.com, that’s good. If you’re more interested in… I have some courses on leadership coaching, you can go to lifedeathandleadership.com. And then I post basically every day on LinkedIn as well, so Seth David Clark on LinkedIn. So those are like maybe the best spots to find me and then you can contact me directly through any of those.

WAYNE BROWN: Right. And if people are looking for counseling, you’re also available to do that?

1. SETH CLARK: Yes. I offer coaching to corporate clients and in nonprofit, all kinds of things. And then I actually offer spiritual direction as well for people who are more interested in outside of life, yeah. 

WAYNE BROWN: Great catching up with you, a really interesting conversation, hopefully our listeners got a lot from it. 

1. SETH CLARK: Thank you, Wayne.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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