On Memorial Day! I took my little family on a hike near the American River in Folsom where I grew up. It wasn’t a super intense hike but sufficient to draw blood tears and an exhausted family. My two-year old son loved climbing every rock and picking up every leaf, and my daughter (5) took a spill towards the end of the hike and scraped her knee up enough to bleed which the sight of made her cry even more. My wife came along for the fun as well even though she is 9 months pregnant! It was so much fun seeing them explore, exercise and enjoy the beautiful nature around us. At the end of the hike we went out on a bridge and watched the river below. After a few minutes a group of kayakers paddled by up and back side to side. That will have to be another adventure and another day for our family, but seeing the kayakers be able to go wherever they wanted on the river is exciting.
They weren’t riding class 5 rapids but the exciting thing is they could go up-stream or down stream fast or slow etc. A twig on the other hand is at the mercy of the flowing water and whatever else may stop it in its path.
I would much rather be a kayaker than a twig. When we take responsibility for our careers and family life we are kayakers, when we let opportunities slip through our fingers and say ” I guess it wasn’t meant to be” we are twigs.
By knowing what you want to achieve aligning those goals with your personal values you start to control you path along the river. One of the hardest lesson to learn is to say “NO” no to assignments that won’t further your goals, no to activities that slow your achievement, no to being lazy and setting up rituals of success instead.
With the quickly changing technological landscape not keeping up with advances is being a twig, exploring and integrating new tools and resources into your daily routines is paddling in the kayak. I have recently been exploring the different social media tools that measure impact/data and came across the program Klout.com which analyses based off of twitter and Facebook information your influence and influencers. I like how the website gives you a score with different categories and shows who you influence. This has encouraged me to be more aggressive with my twitter use to see how my score changes. Again measuring results to track progress!
