As I write this, we are sailing a 28 mile crossing In the British Virgin Islands on a beautiful day with a steady wind and modest seas in a boat appropriately named "Escape Yourself." The length of the crossing and the steadiness of the sea conditions give me pause to consider the name of the boat assigned to us.
At first I notice the immediate ways to read/hear the name:
- Escape - escape what - my identity, the story I tell myself, the story I tell others?
- Escape the necessity to defend my story or perhaps even buy it at all?
- Escape, yourself - with a pause between the words it suggests going off by myself, escaping my circumstances, the usual cast of characters in my everyday life, my regular promises and commitments
- Turning inward, escaping the mindset I bring to each of those areas of my life.
Does being "on vacation" with nothing but the seemingly infinite horizon, puffy white clouds, the rolling deep blue ocean and the wind in my hair to compete for my attention automatically unleash inner freedom? I think not. It's too easy to compartmentalize travel experiences as the set of experiences I hold as special separate from the rest of my life, a physical place I went for a brief time and let off steam.
To engage my own mindset, which includes my leadership beliefs, style, and methodologies I employ every day "back home," requires moving past the circumstances of the trip and into self-examination. After all, even the vastly simplified and yet impactful circumstances here on the ocean are still just that, circumstances.
One of the fundamental principles of our work at 2130 Partners and in our Productive Interactions workshops is that if you don't shift your mindset, changing what you say or do will not make much difference. The paradigm you create with your thinking gives you your reality and will shape the actions of those around you and produce the same old outcomes. Nice to point out and what are you supposed to do about that, right?
What the boat name has allowed me to consider is what the rocketeers of our day call "escape velocity" or the velocity required to escape our gravitational field. If I use my current beautiful and yet very simple circumstances to provoke examination of my own mindset versus my external circumstances, the gravity field of my own beliefs and judgments seems lessened. The possibility of reaching escape velocity or intervening in my historic leadership mindset offers opportunities for new perspectives, clarified vision, new commitments, and new experiences for myself and those in every dimension of my life.
I suggest you do not need to be floating in the ocean to intervene in your own historic leadership mindset. Examine what strategies you might employ to lower your escape velocity so that you can enter a new orbit. Are there teachers, coaches, spiritual communities, or readings that unleash your ability to be reflective? It’s time to get going.