It’s time to make the critical shift from leading the business by yourself to leading an organization of people. At P2Excellence, we help you navigate the uncharted territories of organizational growth with clarity and confidence.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the following quote from Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism (600 BC – 531 BC).
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
At the time, I was thinking about natural consequences. Occasionally, we get lost on the journey, and it would be smart of us to pause and think about the direction in which we are traveling. All of us have some set of goals, even if they are ill-defined at times. And if we think about what we are doing day to day, we have to admit that every day we are clearly moving towards, or we are moving away from the goals we seek.
So last week my thoughts were about stopping, thinking, and changing direction so as not to meet with some nasty natural consequences we would rather not face.
But this week, I have been thinking about all the good times when we have been smart enough, flexible enough, tenacious enough, and sometimes simply lucky enough. The times when we knew what we wanted to head towards, and we did exactly that. The road wasn’t necessarily easy to navigate, and certainly, we had some bumps along the way, but, over the course of time, we kept our direction, and we had reason to cheer in the end.
So perhaps this is a day to stop and celebrate “us,” to take the time to think about our accomplishments, and to recognize what we learned about setting big goals and small ones, too. It’s also a time to think about what we learned from sticking to it and trying again, from asking for advice, and from being open to learning new ways to make something happen. We should also celebrate the times we didn’t settle when to do so would have been really disappointing, and to remember the friends and family who carried us when things got too hard.
Best of all, let’s all take time today to pay attention to what works for us and why, to understand and appreciate how we make things happen so that we can do things just a bit easier next time.
Yes, now that I think about it, today is a good day to celebrate our commitment to staying the course and heading towards a well-lived life. Congratulations, my friend!
Those are our thoughts…we welcome yours.
