BOLD stands for Business Objectives, a Life by Design.
There was an exercise yesterday that really got me attention. The exercise might be something you've done before. The participants sit quietly with their eyes closed while the leader guides them through creating this vision. So I'm going to walk you through - of course your eyes will be open because you're reading.
(More than the exact words used by the instructor I'm relaying this through my own experience of the exercise.)
Sitting with your eyes closed. Breathing in and out quietly and slowly.
You're walking on an old dirt road. The road is lined with trees and the trees narrow with the road. It increasingly becomes more narrow and overgrown into little more than a walking path through this woods. Then the space opens a bit more. It's obvious this used to be a road, but having overgrown sufficiently enough there's no place for vehicles here anymore.
As I walk I see a figure in the distance. (In the exercise this figure is me 40 years in the future). I didn't meet an older me. As I approached I noticed it was my grandpa. During the exercise we didn't talk. We didn't discuss what was going on now or what would happen in the future. I simply saw him working. As I walked he continued to work - just as he had always done.
You have to know. My grandpa was 70 years old when I was born. He worked until he was 77. I lived directly across the street from grandpa and remember the day that car was there. He never had visitors who weren't family. There was one guy - an old blind guy who came with his cane and spittoon. We never went over if grandpa had visitors. The day that car was parked there I ran over as soon as it was gone...I found a sad old man who had just been told he needed to retire. What's a man worth if he can't work he said to me.
Back to my vision. My path was the lined with people I knew. All working. My parents. My maternal grandparents. Everybody just working. Not sure any of them ever did me a favor along the way. I would mow their lawns - all of them - and would sometimes take a break in the middle. Seriously? They allowed me to do that? The work was an hour tops for a kid who didn't walk fast, and I took a break in the middle.
Now as a 40 year old man I am sitting in a classroom for an exercise and all I see is them working. Working hard. Working with their hands. That was their example to me. That was just what they did. All of them. They didn't work out of need - they didn't need because they worked. They didn't work to prove anything to anybody - their work proved them.
As a very self critical guy who analyzes and over analyzes almost every move I make I wonder. Am I destroying their legacy when I lay in bed an extra half hour in the morning? If I decide I'll do that tomorrow? Doesn't tomorrow bring enough of its own work that today's needs to be done right now?
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