Back to Normal, Really?
I am sitting on a Sunday afternoon relaxing after a rather hectic week. The concept of “back to normal” has taken on a whole new meaning for me today. This weekend we have a family, the Needlemans, staying with us from Riverdale. We have known them for close to 10 years since our daughters went to school together. Drew and Daniella have been having a great time and we had a wonderful hike together at Torre Pines Preserve this morning. Josh, the dad, is an open water swimmer, so he swam from the bottom of the steps of the Preserve to the parking lot about a mile away. It was interesting watching Josh swim that distance and get caught in a few places by the force of the water.
It seems like life is getting back to some sort of normal, but there is a part of me that won’t ever see life as normal anymore. There is a new need to do as much as I can to make a difference in so many ways. Before our travels to Africa I was comfortable just spending a quiet afternoon to be a vegetable, but now I don’t feel like that is the best use of my time. We only have so much time in our lives and the more we can do the better.
I have always been the type of person who was able to work hard in spurts and then needed to recharge my batteries. At least that was the story that I told myself. My brother introduced me to a set of videos created by Lynn Twist from The Hunger Project about raising money, something I believe I will be doing plenty of in the coming years. In one of the videos she explained that we are not living in the world as we know it, we are living in the story we tell ourselves about the world we live in. I know that some of you are starting to think that I have really lost it now, but I totally buy into the fact that the stories in our head control our lives.
I also believe that the stories that we tell ourselves, combined with our natural programming, our history and everything else we have experienced in our life has put us all in a totally unique place. You are the only ones who see the world through your lens. This might sound obvious, but it is what causes us most of our communications challenges in our life. I have been studying people for a long time and trying to understand myself at the same time. The more work I do around coaching and helping others the more I see some of these blinders affecting everyone’s lives, especially mine.
The more we can start to look at our beliefs and how they shape how we communicate the more effective we can be. I am seeing how so many leaders, including me, that are so clear in their mind about what they want to accomplish, but when they explain it to others it doesn’t come out so clearly. The story loses some of its focus because the person listening to the story has their own lens and doesn’t share all the same history as the story teller. This is all starting to make sense to me, why our communications is disconnected. We don’t see that others can’t follow our thoughts as we do and we have ineffective communications.
So, what does this have to do with getting back to normal? For me, I believe there is no more normal. Normal is a word that is starting to lose its meaning to me. At this point in my life I need to use my time to reach as many people as possible, learn as much as I can and translate that learning into action. I have been through extreme growth periods in my life and I feel like this is another point in my life for extreme growth. It was not just the trip to Africa, it is everything that I am learning about how we chose to live in this world.
As these thoughts start to become clearer I will continue to write about them and share them with you. I look forward to continuing to share my journey with those around me and hope to make a significant impact on the world. Thanks for reading my thoughts and please let me know if you see the world as I do, or differently. I appreciate your input.
‘Til next time ……
Larry Kesslin 