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Shiny Nickels
“I am never gonna think my way into being a shiny new nickel. I have to go out and do something about it.” –Anonymous New ways of thinking and paradigm shifts are hardly ever birthed out of our new thinking alone. Self-reflection is powerful, but it is rarely enough. Real change is experiential, and it starts with discomfort. Like a few grains of sand in our shoe. Something doesn’t quite work the way it used to. It doesn’t feel right. Maybe we’ve changed. Maybe the situation has changed. Maybe we’ve gotten new information. Maybe…all of the above. Whatever the reason, what once was okay is no longer. Our period of discontent may last moments or…
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Question Marks
question mark — noun 2. something unanswered or unknown I saw my friend Jessica ask for help the other day. She didn’t do it directly, and it wasn’t premeditated. She was relating a bit of a story about herself and, as sometimes happens with humans, she took a brief, stream of conscious detour. A need was revealed. It was clear that revelation was not her intent. She was just joining in the conversation and out it came. Her question mark. A little later, another one of our friends approached her. She gently leaned into the tender spot that Jessica had made known and offered some assistance. Both of their lives will change as a result. Sometimes,…
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So Routine
Sometimes ideas that seem good turn out to be…well…less than good. Now before you jump to conclusions, this is a story of my human nature not a tale of tragedy. I had the opportunity to work from home recently. The weather was beautiful. Blue skies, the lingering warmth of summer, and quietly falling leaves. What could be better than sitting in view of my kitchen window to plow through an inbox that had gotten out of hand? No workout that morning because I hadn’t slept well. Since I had no one to impress but the dog, I didn’t shower right away either. After all, my schedule was flexible. By the time I went to gather…
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Must-Do List
Over the weekend, a friend of mine mentioned that he had sat out a recent company fire drill by slipping into the men’s room as the rest of his peers paraded out. He worked email on his laptop until they returned. He’s retiring and, as a short-timer, just didn’t feel like participating in what was probably his 50th career fire drill. In high school, we called it senioritis; symptoms included laziness, fashion negligence, and a generally dismissive attitude. This time of year seems to awaken this mindset in people regardless of whether they have a scholastic affiliation or not. There’s a certain indolence common to the onset of vacation season that seems to…
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Eyes Wide Open
Both my parents were trained in the visual arts. As a child, my father would sit me down, set a mug or an apple in the center of the table, and entreat me to draw “what I saw, not what I knew”. He knew, of course, that the artistic efforts of children are based on simplified elements of the object we were trying to represent. All trees resemble lollipops. The sun is the yolk of an egg in a Lego blue sky. Fast forward 35 years, as an adult problem solver, the directive is still relevant. How do we, as adults and as leaders, “open our eyes” to address the issue actually…
