Evoke Greatness Podcast
Do you have an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge?
Are you interested in hearing the stories of how successful people have navigated their journey towards greatness…all while stumbling through valuable lessons along the way?
My name is Sonnie and I am the host of Evoke Greatness, the weekly podcast driven by my curious nature and fascination with the champion mindset. I am a HUGE book nerd and a wee bit of a "control enthusiast" with an obsession for motivational coffee cups.
On this podcast, we share the ups and the downs, the highs and lows and all the lessons learned in between. It's my most sincere hope you hear something in one or maybe many of these episodes that resonates with you and reminds you that you’re not in this alone.
I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to Evoke Greatness!
Evoke Greatness Podcast
The Human Side of Leadership: Building Lasting Impact with Dr. Mandolen Mull (Part 2)
🎧 Ep. 150 The Human Side of Leadership: Building Lasting Impact with Dr. Mandolen Mull (Part 2)
In this powerful conclusion, Dr. Mull opens up about the profound shift from chasing external validation to finding true purpose through serving others. From transforming her LinkedIn presence into a storytelling sanctuary to helping ironworkers embrace vulnerability, she reveals how authentic leadership creates ripples of lasting change.
We dive deep into:
* The danger of using work as a maladaptive coping mechanism
* Transforming life's disruptions into opportunities for growth
* Breaking free from the "if-then" mentality of achievement
* The power of authentic storytelling in building community
* Addressing compassion fatigue in leadership
* Creating space for real, unedited conversations
* The importance of leaving a meaningful legacy
* Daily self-reflection and personal accountability
🔑 Key takeaways:
1. External validation is a moving target that can never truly fulfill us
2. True resilience comes from transforming challenges into "positive disruptors"
3. Authentic vulnerability creates deeper connections than professional facades
4. Leadership development must address the human side of leading
5. We must create space for messy, real conversations in professional settings
💡 Quotes to remember:
"I don't want to be a diamond. I don't want this tough and jagged stuff." - Dr. Mandolen Mull
"We're only as good as the amount of good we give to other people." - Dr. Mandolen Mull
"My heart sits with yours. I'm here with you. You're not alone in this moment." - Dr. Mandolen Mull
📚 Resources:
https://mullmentum.com/meet-us
https://www.instagram.com/mullivation/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandolen/
Pick up a copy of “Grit for the Pearl”: https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Pearl-Mullings-Mullivation-MullMentum/dp/B0DCRVY8BH
* "My Heart Sits With Yours" - Coming soon
A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!
Check out my website: www.evokegreatness.com
Follow me on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonnie-linebarger-899b9a52/
https://www.instagram.com/evoke.greatness/
https://www.tiktok.com/@evoke.greatness
http://www.youtube.com/@evokegreatness
Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to part two of the Human Side of Leadership with my amazing guest, dr Mandel and Moll.
Speaker 1:In this episode, we talk through the danger of using work as a maladaptive coping mechanism, transforming life's disruptions into opportunities for growth, breaking free from the if-then mentality of achievement and creating space for real, unedited conversations. And if you haven't had the opportunity, make sure to go back to listen to part one from last week, where we talk about the impact of generational mentorship on leadership style, breaking both chains and cycles in professional development, customizing leadership development for authentic impact and the importance of experimentation in organizational growth. You're not going to want to miss either episode, so if you haven't yet, go back to last week's, listen to it. And then let's hop into part two. As an advocate for recovering formerly ambitious people, those dealing with burnout, like we talked about what do you believe are the root causes of that type of phenomenon in today's workforce. How can people really start to address it in an effective manner so that they can actually deal with like again breaking the cycle right, instead of just picking that up and planting it somewhere else?
Speaker 2:That's a wonderful question. So the thing that I think and for me was you know we are taught in K through 12, if I do this, then I get this and very much an if then kind of linear approach. And when Crohn's came knocking on my door, you know I had not planned to have Crohn's disease. I didn't know anybody with Crohn's disease and that was so just. You know I call it a positive disruptor now, but at the time it was really disruptive for me because it wasn't part of my plan. I had an entire, you know, future planned out. It did not include Crohn's.
Speaker 2:Getting my PhD in change and finding out that I had, you know, brain damage and was going to have to learn to walk and talk again with acquired torsion dystonia Again not in my plans and being told that I was going to be severely disabled within five years and unable to walk or talk or feed myself not in my plans and being told that I was going to be severely disabled within five years and unable to walk or talk or feed myself not in my plans. That was eight years ago this month and I beat the odds. So how did I do that? I think for me, sadly, work was a maladaptive coping skill for me. While I said I went home and had a glass or two of wine, that coping skill for me While I said, you know, I went home and had, you know, a glass or two of wine, that coping skill actually wasn't as maladaptive as my work ethic was. My work ethic allowed me to have an avoidant behavior where I leaned in and I became very over-identified with my work. And it wasn't in my face that this was a bad coping skill, right, because I kept getting rewarded for working late into the night and you know all of the work that I was taking on. I kept getting these awards and people kept championing me that like, wow, we don't know how Madeline's doing it, she's got a feeding tube in her arm and here she is, you know, taking on and tackling all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I was feeding off of those external accolades. Not really take, you know, taking the measure of myself. I was measuring myself against everyone else's expectations. It was a dangerous, dangerous game that I wasn't aware was happening. It was so insidious and then, you know, it started to kind of crumble in a way. Well, this is the only thing that's holding me up. I wasn't eating because I was working so hard.
Speaker 2:I forgot to take care of myself and soon I was severely malnourished. My health was very suffering. Health was suffering very badly and in terms of being able to give people my best self, of course I wasn't. I wasn't able to show up that way. And then if somebody gave me feedback, that felt like it was judgmental, that I wasn't doing the very best, I wasn't earning my gold stars that I had always loved. I just couldn't handle that. You know it felt like a moral. You know assignation against me, like Mandolin is such a bad person because, you know, her quality is just a little bit less. I didn't know how to handle that. Her quality is just a little bit less. I didn't know how to handle that. And so it really took a lot of realignment of me of saying whose expectations am I chasing and is that healthy for me, and whose expectations do I really want to meet?
Speaker 2:And fundamentally it came down to wow, watching my father die which was really painful over a three-year period with cancer, and I remembered the whole week that he was dying. It was a very elongated passing and I just kept asking. I couldn't get it out of my head. I was asking for what? For what he did all of this? For what I'm, you know, the money's going to be gone at some point. The the work that he did as as a master stone mason people won't remember at some point, and he worked all the way up until two weeks before he died. He had cancer crawling all over him for three years, you know.
Speaker 2:And I just thought for what? What is it that I want my legacy to be? And as I kept thinking about it, I thought to develop leaders who go on to develop other leaders, to pass on the generational mentorship that has been embedded in me from these wonderful people, generational mentorship that has been embedded in me from these wonderful people. If I can continue passing the torch that they passed on to me when they gave me a chance, then that's the legacy I want. That's the kind of ambition I want, not these external accolades. That was so empty. It was such a moving target, right? Nobody ever says, oh, you did such a great job and because you did rest on your laurels, the goalposts were always moving and I felt like I was chasing ghosts. They were ghosts of expectations. They weren't actually tangible ones, and so, yeah, I think it was really about reassessing and thinking about what kind of legacy I wanted to leave.
Speaker 1:In your book Grip for the Pearl. First of all, you wrote and had it ready to be published in one week, which is like can we just have like an audible gasp across all listeners, because that in itself is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:How has that experience with your invisible illnesses? You know air quotes that I'll told? No one needed or wanted to hear my story. That felt fundamentally wrong. Right, it wasn't just Crohn's, it wasn't just just Donnie. And, having to beat the odds, it was a late-term miscarriage. It was these really traumatic surgeries.
Speaker 2:It was a car wreck that came out of the blue, like all of these kinds of things that I had to navigate through while still highly achieving in my work, and I thought, gosh, I had that grind mentality, sunny and like I kept making the joke that grit stood for a girl raised in Texas. And you know I'm scrappy and I've got all this kind of stuff, which is true, but I leaned too far into it. I went too far into it. I went too heavy into it. I might as well have been David Goggins or Jack Reacher or Jack Wright. You're like this tough and I'm not that. And I thought people keep talking about pressure makes diamonds and I thought I don't want to be a diamond, I don't want this tough and jagged stuff. I want to have some agitation that is introduced in my life. Like I said, I call all of these challenges I had in life positive disruptors. I did not like them when they first showed up on my doorstep, but I learned how to take those things that agitated me, that created a presence in my life that I couldn't get rid of, and figured out how to transform them into something that self-illuminated, and I do believe that that's the resiliency a lot of people see in me. My story is not the story of everyone with Crohn's or everyone with dystonia or everyone who's had a miscarriage you know all of these types of things or had PTSD from a chiropractor, but my story is my story, and so I started writing about it on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:I would just sit down every morning with a cup of coffee, and then people started showing up and giving me like you know, having conversations with me in the comments, and I was like this is so cool, I have friends, you know. It was such a heartwarming experience for me. And then people started to say, well, mandolin, why don't you publish a book? You know this would be great. And our friend Mark Holden said man, mandolin, you know, I really think you should write a book. And I had said I'd made a post about Grip for the Pearl, and he said that should be the name of your book. And so it was, and I dedicated the book to his daughters and you know, because I just I think again it goes back to people crave inspiration. We like the underdog story and I have been an underdog and I've been blessed. I'm so grateful for the people who have encouraged me.
Speaker 2:And so we have a multi-series memoir coming out now of these LinkedIn posts that I wrote over the course of a year, which seemed to coalesce around five themes that I've just pulled out unedited and just rocked with it and said, all right, we're going to, we're going to let it be what it is and if it resonates with folks, there might be. You know, I didn't get to dictate what's valuable to folks, um, so all I can do is put myself out there, hope that something resonates and help someone feel seen and supported and inspired and realize that, yeah, we are up against some gnarly things in this world, but there's also everywhere around us inspiration and opportunity to change course and break the cycles and the chains right. And so, yeah, that's my hope is that the folks who read those or read my posts on LinkedIn get a sense of who I show up in those stories is exactly who I am in real person in real life and, yeah, my hope is that it just gives someone a sense of like, I'm not alone. We have. You know, the Surgeon General's came out last year and gave a Surgeon General warning of an epidemic of loneliness. You know, globally We've been talking about it for a number of years, even before COVID.
Speaker 2:Global studies have shown that this is a really big problem of isolation and loneliness, and earlier today I saw the new Harvard Business Review and it's on the cover about us being lonely and for whatever reason, people kept showing up in my comments and talking to me and it's just been one of the greatest gifts of my life to form such a cool family on LinkedIn. You're a platform that was meant to be professional and you know and and you know this like it's social media is supposed to be all fake, right, and like here it is that I'm just out there like writing down whatever random mulling I have that morning. You know, I had one about a squirrel with half a tail. You know things and people somehow have found something to connect with. And how cool is that that we're in these little pockets and nooks and crannies of the universe. We're able to sit here and say, hey, I'm messy, you're messy. Let's navigate this mess together.
Speaker 1:You defy the odds of what one coins the algorithm when it comes to LinkedIn. I know we had a call about this one time and it was like, okay, in order for your post to perform on LinkedIn, you know it has to be this and you have to have this many spaces, and it has to be short and concise. And your posts are long and you have an insane gift for storytelling, I will tell you, and it draws people in, and so I laugh every time I see your posts because I'm like, haha, linkedin, this meets none of those and outperforms everyone else's. But it's with true engagement, because you sparked something.
Speaker 1:Somebody deeply resonated with something you wrote, and I love when people write in the way that you do, because I've always, since I was little, I used to love to read and I would get so enthralled in something that it would be as I was reading it. I could visually see it playing out in my mind. It was almost like I was in the story with them, like as the observer, and that's what I do with yours. I'm curious have you always had that gift of storytelling? Is this something you've honed over time?
Speaker 2:So my family would say that I did that. I always had a gift with words. You know, I, quite frankly, am shocked by it. You know, I really again did not, I think in many ways. When I started writing on LinkedIn, it was kind of screaming into the abyss. I just I was like I just knew. You know, I had a farmer student get diagnosed with dystonia and she told me, you know, dr Moore, because I knew your story, I wasn't afraid when I got diagnosed and I thought, if she was comforted in that moment of a scary diagnosis because she knew that I had lived with it, that's worth me sharing and being vulnerable.
Speaker 2:I have my foster daughter, however, in my life, because a former student of mine knew of my story and thought that I would make a good mother, and this last year I've been a mother, you know, and so you think about the stakes being like something like that. It's like, oh my gosh, so I'm going to like not lean into that. I don't think so. So it's awkward. I'm rambling in my post like I am here, it's again, it's who I am, but I just kept thinking I don't want people to have to know me in person, to know me as a person and if I can show that and try to show my heart and just talk about things, you know, maybe I'll make sense out of it myself and in the process, maybe, you know, somebody will give me feedback on it and then I can get additional insight. That was really what I was trying to do and it's just been incredible that people have been so kind to me as you are to think that it's.
Speaker 2:You know, somebody said something about you're my favorite storyteller on LinkedIn and I went. I didn't realize I was a storyteller. You know, somebody said something about you're my favorite storyteller on LinkedIn and I went. I didn't realize I was a storyteller. You know, I just thought, oh my gosh, I, you know, I just genuinely didn't think that and still don't.
Speaker 2:But it's been like I Googled, I Googled myself for something the other day because, right, like that's what we do, we have to see what's out out there. So I googled myself and it popped up and it said author and I went. They think I'm an author and my friends are all like Mandolin, you are, and I'm like, oh, I guess I am right. I didn't. You know, it's just. I just, it's just things that you don't think about. I don't mean that in a you know, flippant, a glib way. It's such a gift that people have resonated with anything that I had to say, because, again, I think that all I'm doing is honoring the people who honored me and if somehow their words come through me and resonate with someone else, how cool is that me and resonate with someone else Like how cool is that?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, your upcoming book, my Heart Sits With Yours suggests a deeply empathetic approach to leadership, and it was a deep work of the heart for you. How do you see that role of empathy evolving in leadership, especially this post-pandemic world? That seems almost like I referred to it with somebody for like BC and AD, right, like it's, like it's a different world. How do you think that empathy continues to evolve in our leadership, or how can we actively get it to continue to evolve?
Speaker 2:You know we've talked about, we've heard this phrase of like people having compassion fatigue right now, right, and people even getting burned out on that right, like I don't have the bandwidth to have any more compassion for somebody's, you know, like they kind of get jaded and cranky like their sob story or something like that. I think we are seeing like an empathy fatigue, because I do see that people know life out there is really hard right now, more so than what we've seen historically, and people are wanting to show up for other people. They genuinely do. I think we are dealing with such good people all around us all the time, but they're just in these, like crappy structures, these, you know, one size fits all things. They don't feel like they're seen, they don't feel like they have agency and agility and autonomy in their lives, and so then they want to bring all of that empathy forward and they just feel depleted and they just feel depleted. And so I think, sadly, right now we are seeing we've heard about empathetic leadership and I think, desperately, we see great people wanting to show up. That way. Their well is dry, because who develops the leaders? Who's investing in these leaders? Who's having these conversations with leaders? That talks about the messy crowd.
Speaker 2:Right, you know that I work with union iron workers, which is so much fun for me, and I recently got told by a leadership team. They said, you know, mandolin, we send our folks to like Carnegie or Cornell or all of these types of programs. We heard yours is the real deal. We heard that you had iron workers crying within the first hour, these men who were all strangers, with neck tattoos and, you know, missing fingers from the hazards of their work, and then, like you had them crying and I said, well, we're talking about the stuff that goes home with them. Sunny, I had individuals talking about. You know, mandolin, we lost an employee, you know one of our members, and he, you know, in a car wreck and I had to go clean out their locker and I had to take it to the family. And this man looks at me and he's crying and he goes. They don't train us for that.
Speaker 2:And so these are the conversations, right? Is who leads the leaders? Not this, like. Here's your five-step plan with the fancy acronym on how to be a great leader, because the reality is nobody says I want to be a crappy one, but we are crappy because we're human and we're messy and we get in our own ways and we want to be empathetic.
Speaker 2:But it feels so disconnected when we're in these kinds of structures. So it's leaning in and saying what is that real stuff and where do you have an outlet? And one of my guys said well, you know, mandolin, are you talking about kind of a kumbaya? And we're going to have like a cry closet, right, and I love. This is why I love working with iron workers, because they'll push back on me every which way to Sunday, which is great. And before I could even say it and I'm going to be, I'm going to apologize head here because I am going to curse in just a moment. But my, my one of the other iron workers said dude, we do have a cry closet, it's called the shitter. And you know, I thought I thought you know these guys know that they need the support, they know that they're trying to get empathy, they know that they are wanting this training and development and they don't know where to get it from.
Speaker 2:And we're not having these conversations. And it takes a lot of courage, when you're in manufacturing or a high-level exec, to go and say I keep stepping all over myself because my ego is getting in the way. I feel really insecure. I have a massive case of imposter syndrome and I need help with this, or I don't know how to shake that. People at work are suffering from. This person just lost their spouse and they're coming to work. We only give them three days for bereavement or something like that and they come back to work and the rest of my team doesn't know how to talk to this person. They're not calling the EAP because that doesn't feel connected. So what do I as a leader do? How do I show up for my team? I want to be empathetic, but I don't have the tools. And so that's the conversations.
Speaker 2:I think we have to lean in, and I think for a very long time people have been wanting to be like PC. Yeah well, we can't say too much because you know legal is going to come after us or something. And I think we've got to get to a stage where we just say can we have real conversations with real people? Can we just allow each other to live an unedited life in real time, give each other that space for grace and try to figure out how we can genuinely be empathetic.
Speaker 2:I do think the empathy is there, although I said the well was dry earlier. I think it's dry because people feel like they're being jammed up of being able to give it forward. Right, they want to do it, but they're fatigued by the structure and the system they're in far more than the fatigue of their heart and what they're wanting to show up as. So I think we've got to get those structures out of their way, the facades out of their way, and just allow them to be a little bit messy and understand that that's okay. I think we are making headway there and I think empathy pours forth from that. But yeah, people are kind of confined right now, I think, in that kind of totality of that structure and it's something we've got to dismantle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as we're wrapping up, there's a question that I always love to ask people. But I'm dying to ask you just because I just think your insight and your wisdom is so heartfelt. I mean, it's so real and it's so humane and raw, and I love that. I appreciate that you show up that way. But I'm that I appreciate that you show up that way, but I'm curious. I love to ask people at the end if you, if it were your last day on earth and you had one piece of advice that you got to share with your daughter or with your family or with all the people you've mentored over your career, what is that one piece of advice that you would impart on the world?
Speaker 2:You know that's tough, right, I would. I think it's. We're only as good as the amount of good we give to other people. You know, I really think that's true right. So, like for so long as I was saying, you know that, recovering a formerly ambitious person, I thought I was good because, you know, I earned good grades that offset my father's jail log in the newspaper. You know, I thought those accolades were how I was good, the awards were how I was good.
Speaker 2:Now, I fundamentally believe we are only as good as the good we give out to other people, believe we are only as good as the good we give out to other people. And in the ways in which I can stand there in that room with ironworkers that are crying, being very raw, being authentically themselves, and you know us sitting here saying we might not know all the answers and me not trying to jump to a solution to fix it either, right, Like sitting there with them. And that's why the book is called my Heart Sits With Yours, because there's times we don't have the words, we can't offer comfort in the way that our heart, that empathetic nature, wants to give it out, so we get jumped and so we just say my heart sits with yours. I'm here with you. You're not alone in this moment. So to me, that's the best piece of advice that I can give is we're only as good as the good we give to others. Because if I can give that good to other people, goodness gracious.
Speaker 2:I ask myself every night am I proud of the woman I presented myself to be today, and I don't mean presented like in a facade, but just how I carried myself, what I put out into the world, what good did I show up for my best self today? And sometimes that answer is no, and I've got to do damage control. The next day, I got to go and do some mea corpus. But yeah, I think many people aren't doing that very easy self-check at night. And it's so easy. Not that we intend to do bad or harm people, but ego is a real thing, insecurity is a real thing and it chatters away at us and biology gets away with us with our amygdala telling us you know threat responses and all this stuff, and we don't act as our best selves. We don't. You know threat responses and all this stuff, and we don't act as our best selves. We don't act in the way that we can be most proud and in the good that we can give.
Speaker 2:So I think if we ask ourselves that, barometer, how am I showing up and showing good for other people? Can I feel proud of you? I love when people tell you they're proud of you, but the reality of it is, you know, I've started telling people like I'm really proud of you. Know, I love when people tell you they're proud of you, but the reality of it is, you know, I've started telling people like I'm really proud of you, but I shouldn't be more proud of you than you are of yourself, because I don't think people take their that right. They don't take their flowers, of that, of saying I am proud of how I showed up in that situation or how I presented myself to be, and I think we've got to get better champions at that, and so, yeah, I think I love that question, but I really do think that's what I hope people could keep showing up for doing good for others.
Speaker 1:Well, I would love to have you share. Where can people find you? Obviously, I mean, you would do yourself a disservice to all of my listeners if you do not go follow Mandolin on LinkedIn and enthrall yourself in her stories like I do. But where can everybody find you and follow you? And my Heart Sits With Yours is going to be out in about three weeks. Where can people get your books?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Grit for the Pearl and my Heart Sits with Yours. And then the other in the series are all on Amazon. They're on Barnes Noble, so, yeah, they can find them pretty easily. We've got them in e-book, paperback and hardcover. It's surreal to me, again, that people are reading it. That's incredible. Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. I still keep writing every day, although the multi-series memoir is just taking place over the fall of 2023 into the summer of 2024. So I keep writing. So I'm guessing maybe there might be some more additions to the multi-series memoir. I am also on Instagram under Mullivation. I did not come up with that, that is what one of my iron workers came up with. And then I have a company, a consulting company, where I do leader development, which is Mullmentumcom. Again, I did not come up with that, one of my former students came up with Mullmentum. So the series of the multi-series memoir is Mullings, mull-ovation and Momentum. So yeah, so if I could make fun of my name, we're going to go into it, you know, hey, it's low-hanging fruit.
Speaker 1:Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes as well. But, mandolin, thank you, thank you for what you're doing in the world, thank you for showing up so full in such a human way. You are a dynamic woman, you are a dynamic human, and you are creating more positive ripples in this world than I think you may ever actually know about, and so I appreciate you and I'm so grateful to have you on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking with you and I'm really just thrilled. Thank you very much and I hope that something I said would be of value to your listeners.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around If you liked this episode. It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.
