I recently returned from facilitating a Remodelers Advantage peer group review – a good meeting with good people. There was lots of conversation about what to do next and how to accomplish all that needed doing gracefully and with forethought. Compassion, gracefully and focused were words used many times over those 3 days. Many good ideas were generated but they were really just new twists on the basics: know your business, know yourself, take care of your clients and do good work. Easy to say, harder to do.
But the biggest idea that struck me was the pervasive sense of doom under which we currently live, scrambling like ants for the next bite of food. I believe the daily news has had an enormous impact on our consciousness. I’ve fallen victim to the drug – reading every political and economic newspaper and magazine in depth, cutting out articles and, in fact, posting them on this very blog. I’ve been watching The News Hour nightly, Washington Week in Review on Fridays and any other like show I can find. AND I’VE BECOME HORRIFIED AND TERRIFIED SIMULTANEOUSLY!
It’s like driving by a terrible mangled tangled mess of cars on the interstate – what do you do? I drive right by, looking the other way, saying a silent prayer. Yet I’m looking at this economic train wreck with the same intense interest that I deplore in drivers who gawk at the car accident.
I’ve stop it, stopped it right then! The minute I left that meeting on Friday night I was determined to look away and say more silent prayers.
I can do little to impact the macro level but I can do plenty to impact my own micro level of economic reality.
That’s what I’m going to do from now on – and look at all the time that’s freed up to do it!