Jerry Jones is fascinated by all things culture and loves watching when cultures blend. He is a cross-cultural trainer and coach who offers support and develops resources for global people.
He goes deep with expats and repats and locals who are wading through the mess of cross-cultural challenges and helps them move forward. He works with great people all over the world who want to understand how to do global life better. Jerry also writes about what he sees and how he sees it, and loves to share the nuggets picked up from his successes and failures with international business.
Jerry is a guest that I had to have on the show early in the inaugural episodes, because he planted the original Leaving Well seed (in the international expat space), and the concept has been with me ever since. In this episode, we riff about the presence of grief, pillars vs. bricks, ranking your friends, and get to the heart of how powerful leaving well can truly be.
"You need to rank your friends. You want to give the most time to the people who have invested the most in you. You don’t want to give your last moments, your most valuable moments, to your Number 15 friends. Your Number Ones deserve your best time. It’s good stewardship of your time.”
Additional Quotes:
“The opposite of intentionality is … natural. If you’re not intentional, you don’t have to do anything. You just float. You go where the tide or the stream takes you. Goodbyes are not natural for a lot of us. If we do what comes naturally, we avoid them because they hurt, they’re painful. Applying intentionality to all of that is key.”
“It’s not just hard and good at the same time - saying goodbye - but the hard is because of the good. The two run parallel, they run in tandem. They travel together. The good-er it is, the harder it is. The reality of leaving well and leaving poorly, it all boils down to this: the only way to make leaving easy is to make the relationships you have less good.”
“One of the big surprises for people is that their issues can fly. Wherever you go, your issues will be with you on the other side. That’s what leaving well is all about. Addressing those issues, resolving those issues where you can. Making sure that to the best of your ability you don’t pack them in your bags and take them with you.”
To learn more about Jerry:
Jerry’s co-hosted podcast Diesel & Clooney
Jerry’s Leaving Well blog post
To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/
This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
