“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig” - Robert Heinlein
As a leader of your organization, do you find it difficult to make a personal and/or structural change? To get out of your comfort zone? To go for a walk on the wild side? You are not alone. Change is difficult for most folks. Life, in general, is difficult and uncertain. Therefore, habits and repetitious behavior is often the path of least resistance.
But as leaders, we must break free of these limits and boundaries and find a way to be an effective leader in our family, business or organization. It is critical that we find these “lanes of change”. If not, we will find ourselves doing the same old thing and hoping for new and exciting results. This is not fair to anyone who looks up to you as a leader. You have that responsibility to be better as that leader.
At times, I find myself in a rut, just trudging along. As of late, I have tried to start to think differently and have worked hard on making personal adjustments to get out of those lanes and be more creative again. It is sometimes a slow slog but I find a necessary one. It is easy to just say that we are overwhelmed with the day to day activities of running our businesses or families and do the same old things again and again.
I encourage you to take some quiet time for reflection and exploration of yourself and try to figure out what you need to do to get out of your lane. Maybe it’s taking up yoga, heading to the west to stare at the magnitude and grandeur of the Rockies, maybe it’s just as easy as making it a habit to taking a quiet walk from time to time to just think, and not react.
I was very fortunate to be in Telluride, Colorado while writing this blog to clear my mind and to get out of my lanes. One of the “Near Rocks” in my life right now is to find a way to bring more creativity back into myself. Breathing clean, crisp air, watching the skiers slowly traverse from side to side of the slopes and just reflecting in quiet solitude seems to be working.
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