“If you light a light for someone, it will also brighten your own path.  The kindness you give away is often the same light that leads you home.”  Joseph Bassey

“There will be days when life feels unbearably heavy and every step feels like a burden.  And there will be moments filled with such joy that you will wish for time to pause.  Neither of them shall last forever.  Embrace life in a way that every intense experience makes you wiser, stronger, and more grateful.  Robb Joyt

“There’s a version of your story that already exists…and the version you decide to step into next.  What you’ve lived through built you but it doesn’t have the authority to limit who you become.  You have the ability to rewrite a completely different story moving forward.”  Ryan Sick

“Ring the bells that still can ring.  Forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack, a crack in everything—that’s how the light gets in.”  Leonard Cohen

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We are all familiar with the concept of viewing life or business from “thirty thousand feet.”  Simply put it means to step back, or above the fray, outside of the details, away from the daily noise, free of AI and conflicting views of well-meaning employees, and look at life or business from a different view.  At some point, the details of how to live your life or how to run your business are absolutely essential but no more essential than stepping away in silence, in a setting of your choosing, and looking out into the future, thinking thoughts you would never think during the frantic–or even normal--pace of a Monday through Friday day.

We are nearing the end of the second quarter which will mark another half year of progress with our life and with our company.  Let us all step back and look out six months into the future and imagine an ending to this 2026 year.  Once we have that ending picture in mind, let us all spend time in silence, perhaps alone on a mountain top, or midnight sitting on a sandy beach serenaded by the rolling waves of a sleeping ocean, or maybe on a long, early morning walk through a quiet park, and carefully map out the steps that we know are necessary to take to reach that ending.  Do not rush these thoughts, let them flow freely, let them linger–remember you are at thirty thousand feet, not at your desk with a pen and paper at hand.

Maybe there are changes to be made, maybe not.  Perhaps a complete overhaul or possibly just a slight adjustment.  That business call you have been meaning to make but keep sliding to the edge of your desk; that off-the-cuff visit you want to make to a friend or business associate just to reconnect and commiserate with; that creative marketing piece that you have envisioned but have not found the time to put on paper; that breakfast, lunch, or coffee meeting that you have convinced yourself would not be productive.

Maybe nothing comes to you.  Maybe life simply moves on.  What have you lost?

“You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so where you do not know what was in the morning paper, a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are, and what you might be.  At first you may find nothing’s happening…but if you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen.”  Joseph Campbell

Have a productive and thoughtful week.

Ron