Tropical travel...

Costa Rica is a nice break from the cold of my home in Colorado, where it snowed on Easter! The palms and warm sunshine do wonders for the soul. Alas, the cage of my hotel still precludes full restorative emersion, but I'll take what I can get.

On my way from the airport with my friend Juan and I caught up and discussed the demands of work and home. He reminded me of the Stephen Covey observation that we sometimes trade the important for the urgent. This is an ever present challenge in my own life, where I have to fight to keep the priority straight, carving the time for the important!! How about you?

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Early flight consolation

I was never a fisherman. If I had been, then rousing my body, as my friend Ange says, ''before Jesus wakes up'' wouldn't be that rough. That being said, when I do need to catch the dark-o'clock flight, there's usually a nice consolation prize...ah Starbucks :) YVR, or Vancouver Int'l Airport provides the ambient babbling brook and native bird-squawk (with a nod of the head to the indigenous tribes that preceded them), which also helps to ease the startling morning effect!

POP QUIZ: From where does the coffee megalith's company name derive? BONUS: Name the native tribe of the Vancouver region?

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Dinner for one

Part of this blog is to dispel the myth about the glamour of business travel. Aside from the familiar airport, hotel, and office, the evening meal is the one slight variable...what I eat. Could be seafood, could be steak, could be pasta, could be pizza.

But one thing remains the same, at the end of the meal...only ONE dinner mint: dinner for one :(

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Pass it on...

I'm beginning to enjoy the solitude of mornings, coffee cup in hand, reading my favorite blogs. It's like chatting with friends, hearing what's going through their minds. One of my favorite morning stops (and the top of my blog 'faves') is Cathy Walters. A week or so back she wrote a blog called jumpin and jivin' that inspired my heart and ever since I've been trying to "pass it on"! These comments are a public thank you to her and hopefully an encouragement to others to inspire others!

I get to lead teams of leaders in what I do to earn a living. Part of those teamwork sessions involves an opening "defreeze" - it's like an icebreaker with the express purpose of getting their minds to move in a distinctly different direction from their usual work-a-day world activity. I chose to use Cathy's blog question of "If you could live your perfect life, what would you include? and what can you start doing TODAY?". I passed this question on to about 16 top leaders of a U.S. organization and then yesterday I posed it to about the same number of top leaders in a Canadian company. Two observations, 1) It causes just the pause for a 'deep think' that makes a defreeze question effective, and 2) people then have an idea floating around in their heads that they can act on to improve their lives! I love this!

Maybe you can kick this question around yourself, or with friends and loved ones and see where it goes! Let me know what you come up with and any of the responses you hear in a comment!