Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 615: Separation Anxiety

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“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.”

Have you ever had the feeling that you are becoming separated emotionally from your boss or your co-workers? I am talking about that gnawing feeling deep inside that makes us think that we are on unstable footing or that things are changing around us and we are no longer are in control of our own destiny. It’s the being out of the loop or in the dark worry. If you have experienced this, you are not alone. We all go through it at one time or another and it can be the smallest of events or actions that starts the cycle; the unreturned phone call or email, the inability to get a meeting set up, the word from a co-worker that is different than what you were told, or the meeting where you weren’t invited. One of any of these could be enough to cause separation anxiety to creep in.

What is most important is how we react to this feeling. A wonderful learning is that while we cannot control the actions and feelings of others, we have 100% control of our own feelings and reactions. If we choose to let this anxiety define us or to influence how we act or treat others then we make ourselves vulnerable to other emotions to follow that could be harmful; frustration, anger, resentment, revenge, envy, etc. Once those make their way into us we will likely allow them to play out in our behaviors, which, can only led to no-good. God always gives us antidotes to the poisons of our lives. In this case, he tells us to not be concerned with the separation that we may feel from other people and instead put our trust and faith in Him and His love, which can never be separated. To this, we shouldn’t ever allow ourselves to feel alone as we can call on Him at any time and he will be there for us. If you are feeling the anxiety of separation at work, see if you can’t turn this over to Him and let him fill the void and provide you the peace to work and live in a way that this anxiety disappears.

Reference: Romans 8:38 (New Living Testament)