Common sense…

October 29th, 2009

Having grown up on Paine Ave., as in Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and an all around rabble rouser kind of guy, I am partial to clarity.  Clarity of words.  Clarity of thought.  Easy to say, often hard to do.

As an executive coach, and organizational development consultant, I get an often intimate, inside look into individual lives and their collective communities.  From where I sit, it looks like the world is going to hell in a hand basket. 

Work/life balance (not!), corporate politics, email overload, HR’s change management initiative of the month, the economy, you name it…  how is it that we’ve managed to so over complicate our lives, especially at work?  Is it that we’re just so busy that we can’t see the forest for the trees?  Is it that it’s been so long since we’ve even been to the forest, taken a whiff of primordial leaf mold and stood in awe of two hundred foot giants, that we have become disassociated from our authentic selves?

Whatever it is, it’s time for a change.

What can I do today to shift my life to a more balanced state? 

Right now, it looks like writing this blog is helping.  A long walk in the woods with my beautiful wife and our bear-of-a-dog retriever this afternoon definitely helped.  Stopping to watch the sun go down, listening to the tic-toc of the wall clock, checking in with my breathing, slowing it down, just being aware of it… that helps too.

Those of you that know me know that I’ve become a real fan of Jim Loehr’s The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to Full Engagement and Optimal Performance.  He has a site where you can take a quick self assessment to see how you’re doing in the four key areas of life balance – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.  Check it out at: http://www.performanceprograms.com/Surveys/FullEngageIntro.html

But, I suggest, if you’re not feeling particularly strong/healthy/vital at the moment, wait until you are.  Then go check it out, and, make a plan for doing something about whatever it is you discover about yourself.  And, do it.  Feeling good about ourselves, a cyclical event like ALL things is nature, is the best  time to take on new projects, especially ones that can have such profound, and positive effects.  That’s just common sense.  After all, we are still very much a part of nature, whether we’ve been to the forest in a while, or not.