Marlow's Musings 8/13/23
Insights, adventures and fun stuff from this week.
Audio narration by David Marlow
Of Tippy Toes and Other Measures…
From the time she was a baby my first granddaughter ‘C’ has been fascinated by the brass knocker on our front door.
Before she could even talk she would stand at the door and hold her arms up and gesture for me to pick her up so she could lift the knocker and let it drop to make a noise.
Even though it startled her, she wanted to do it again…and again and again.
She’s now five and still fascinated by it. Yesterday she reached it for the first time on her own.
“Grandpa,” she exclaimed, “ I can reach the door knocker…and not even on tippy toes!”
Oh, to be a kid and measure progress by no longer having to be on tippy toes to reach something.
Over the years I’ve led thousands of people through changes and growth of one kind or another.
One of the things I learned through three decades of studying kaizen and other continuous improvement practices, you have to acknowledge the success to energize the next.
There is nothing worse for a team who works hard at making some improvement, completing a project, or solving a problem than to have that success ignored.
It kills energy and enthusiasm.
It’s no different for each of us as individuals.
Sometimes the improvements we’ve made become background noise or the norm. We can lose sight of the progress we’ve made.
Be sure to celebrate them along the way.
Especially if you no longer have to be on tippy toes to achieve them.
Word of the Week
invitation (n.)
in·vi·tey·shuhn
request (spoken or written) to participate or be present or take part in something.
a situation or action that encourages someone to do something or makes a particular outcome likely.
Some older root meanings suggested ‘to encourage someone to go after something, pursue with vigor.’
There is a quiet invitation extended to all of us. So quiet that the noise of life often drowns it out.
Or other voices, high-pitched and demanding seem to call us. Like that nagging voice, demanding you prove who you are.
Their job is to keep us from receiving the invitation that leads to life.
It's important to silence the noise because if we don’t we will never hear the quiet invitation, the call of purpose.
In case you missed it…
As part of the Ikigai Lexicon, I’m sharing posts about the 47 Big Bold Beautiful Benefits of Ikigai.
Here is the latest. Inner peace and the 9 Signs you might be losing yours and what to do about it.
🌀 On Linkedin, I shared the connection and importance of Ikigai in Business and how advances like Ai and automation should increase not lessen our humanity.
While our profession is not our Ikigai, we spend much of our time in the workplace.
The closer we align our Ikigai to our work, the more fulfilling that work will be and the better we will be at performing it.
Ikiquest+
This week in Ikiquest+…
The ‘Coffee Meditations’ continue!
I created this for Plus subscribers this week.
Cheers!
Quote I’m Pondering
“Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine.”
Seth Godin
I spent years ‘fixing’ customer support teams. I put fixing in quotes because the problems were rarely the fault of customer support. Almost every problem was created somewhere else and only became visible in customer support because they were the closest to the customer.
Bishop Desmond Tutu said something philosophically similar, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.”
In our lives (and in business and politics and you name it) we too often go for the canary when the canary is simply the indicator of the problem.
Comment of the Week: Noise
Noise was a big theme this week, specifically getting the noise down in order to hear the call of purpose.
Dave J shared a thought on noise that aligned well.
There is no end to the increasing amount of distractions and volume of noise in the world. We have to have filters if we don't want to be confounded by the chaotic environment. It seems to me that finding purpose, our Ikigai, goes a long way to establishing the best filters.
Fun Thing I Saw This Week
We said goodbye to my wife’s beloved laptop this week. In the process of getting a new one, we were given this visual treat.
An enormous red-tailed hawk at the entrance to the mall. This one had to be 24 inches from head to tail.
While we often see them where we live out in the country this is in a busy and noisy part of the city.
We stood and watch him for quite a while and then he tired of us and flew away.
Then on to the Apple store…
Final Thoughts
Between the Canadian wildfires and a hip problem unrelated to running my summer runs have not been what I had hoped.
Summer is when I make the most progress because I can typically run longer and nearly every day.
Not this year. The smoke has been bad enough that it wasn’t safe to be out in the yard let alone suck in a lot of air running.
My hip has been tight and physical therapy wasn’t making much difference. Running has been an act of will and frankly not a lot of fun.
Until this week.
As I was stretching I could feel the muscles release and relax. On the runs, there was a flow and ease I hadn’t felt all year. The air was clean and the skies were clear.
It was fun again.
🌀Quest well
You can learn more about Ikiquest+ here.
For Plus subscribers, you can access your Ikiquest+ resources here.
Need help creating your Ikiverse? Explore 1-on-1 coaching here.
Thank you very much fir the very unsightful and thoughtful post David. I remember my own daughter when she was 3 or 4 years old. She used our dining table to measure her height daily. And when she reached the age of 5 she was stomping with joy and shouting out loud that she was a big girl already because she was the same height to the table.
Yes, agree we have to cut down the noise in our life to make good judgement and apply critical thinking. It is only in silence we can really listen to what we really desire and what God is telling us what to do.
Thanks gor sharing the picture of the red-tailed hawk. My first time to see one. What I know about hawks are tgat they are black in color. Now I can deduce that not all hawks are black. Besides, the Philippine hawks that I see before when I was little is not as fat as the one you posted. It is slim😁.
Love the quotes also.
Thanks for sharing.
Have a great week ahead. Regards to Alicia🍁🌷🍁😊
I pray and hope that my application for US Visa will be approved. If that happens and if I will be given the chance to go to US I hope to visit and see some of my friends in LinkedIn including you. 🙏🙏🙏