John Paul Fullerton, in the continuation of Life of a fad (LO6312),
reminded us of The Shadow and said (with a lot of snip):
>"Also, it's unpleasant to disturb the reflections of you all."
Methinks most of us grew up with lots of shadows and ghosts. We're
influenced in conscious and unconscious ways by subliminals,
associations, past histories, operant and classical conditioning and
all sorts of other frames and operants.
My early model of the world was filled with "constructive criticism"
from parents and teachers who apparently recognized all the things I
was and saw all of my possibilities. Man, what a burden. A daily
world filled with "coulda's" and "shoulda's" that has taken me forever
to address.
A key that keeps coming up in these messages, though, is perspective.
So in the style to which you've become accustomed, let me share
another "reflection of reality."
One of the most powerful illustrations I use shows a person seeing
themselves in a full-length mirror. Neutral in gender and expression,
the image is of themselves holding one of those Square Wheels to which
we commonly experience. It causes us to roll ahead, Thump Thump. And
we roll ahead.
But the reality of the situation is that it is only a reflection.
What she/he actually holds is a round wheel with rim, one that could
be employed immediately to make the journey smoother. We all have all
the tools we need to improve our personal performance and impact our
organizations. The difficult is that we generally have these
histories of hearing about what's not working well from others and
often from our negative self-talk (now there is a conditioned
phenomenon!) that gets in the way of making progress.
And although a few have taken shots at me for my position on
"Objectivity," let me simply suggest,
"Don't Just Do Something, Stand There."
Take a moment to step back from your journey forward to discover what
round wheels already exist and can be implemented.
But don't forget, The Shadow
Between the ideal
and the reality
between the motion and the act
falls The Shadow.
(done from memory, can't remember the source, well-known)
For the Fun of It!
--Scott Simmerman Performance Management Company, Taylors SC USA 29687-6624 74170.1061@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>