Part 1
The curtain on the new landscape for work and home life has been pulled back and the stage view changes daily. Something that is becoming more and more apparent to me is that those who possess the willingness to traverse difficulty will come out of this with greatest strength and success. A lot of the personal change and possibilities we experience will come from the times when the things that are placing pressure on us ultimately turn out to be the moments that give us power and possibility. The performance we give on our individual stages will be dependent on our resilience and our love of people. I am already seeing the businesses that truly care about their customers and have a solid proposition are pulling clients back in their droves.
Lockdown and isolation have been pure bliss for some and agony for others. On one hand you have those who loved the solace of a good book, a quiet movie and a walk in the sun. They were in heaven whilst those pondering their financial future and living up close to people they didn’t really like unpacked a terrifying reality. It has been a place of significant contrast and has brought out many learnings in all of us.
There are those of us who have experienced the sober reality of a ‘crushing’ in their lives and others who have skipped into the elation of ‘soaring’ to new heights. The discovery I have realised with Crushing and Soaring is that one is not opposed to the other. If you consider the animal kingdom for a moment, we can see with the eagle it is about flying. However, for the eaglet as it considers its first moves from the family home and security it is about falling.
Let’s pause and consider the future of the eaglet for a moment. As we know from every documentary, the eaglet is pushed out of the nest by the mother eagle. They are sent out to get food because their food supply is now cut off and they are pushed off the side of the cliff to survive by their mothers. Can you imagine your mother pushing you off a cliff and as you plummet to your death? This act is later going to be considered as one of your greatest learnings. You may even find yourself as the stunned eaglet one day expressing your thanks to her? The life lesson for us all is revealed in the eaglet falling to the ground and hysterically flapping its wings. The learning experience is that it is the thing that causes the eaglet to be crushed will become the thing that causes it to soar. It is the parallel opposite of how most of us desire to run our lives today.
My next blog will be all around the value of going through a process of crushing
