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!

Hold on Loosely...

I was chatting with a friend over lunch the other day and we agreed that sometimes we (or anybody) can wrap our head around and idea, argument, position, or expectation and literally stop thinking! We cease taking further data in about a subject or conception and thereby risk missing the discovery of a better or improved understanding. The presumption is dangerous because our understanding of reality is continually being refined. Think this is too philosophical...think "parenting!" Just when I've got one phase figured our...bam, my kids age on me!

While it is critical to "keep an open mind", I also believe that we do so in order to then close our minds upon better ideas and deeper truths. It is a process. If we fix our minds too rigidly, we stop allowing ourselves to be refined. [Old Guy Alert!] There's this 80's band called 38 Special that summed up well what I'm trying to say:

Just Hold On Loosely,
but don't let go
If you cling to tightly,
you're gonna lose control

[PS - The Daffy Duck image above is from a 1956 Looney Tune entitled Ali Baba Bunny and NO, I'm not that old, but I do like cartoons.]