“Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.” ~ August Hare
Wind. It blows, sometimes in our favor, sometimes against us.
I remember one particular day when I went out for an afternoon run. The wind was blowing, at my back. My run started so easy. I felt like running was effortless (and it’s usually not). It felt so good. Cruising along. And that all was fine and good, until I had to turn around and come home. All of the sudden, running became much harder. It was no longer easy, my pace much slower. The wind, not at my back, was now a force to deal with instead of a push in the direction I was going.
And don’t we have these “winds” in our life. Sometimes they blow in our favor, and sometimes they blow against us. And both can be beneficial, if we allow them to be.
When we have winds blowing in our favor, the wind at our back, per se — everything is flowing very well. Things in our life are clicking along. At times, it feels effortless to get done whatever activity we’re working on.
And then, at other times, we face a strong headwind in our daily lives. Those days when things just don’t go as planned. The days when we stub our toe getting out of bed. Burn our tongue drinking coffee. Get a speeding ticket on our way to work. And that’s all before 8 A.M in the morning. You know what I’m talking about. Those days when we just seem to know, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
And I say we embrace both of these “days” — the good, and the bad. These are the winds that can bring lasting change into our lives. If we choose to allow ourselves to accept these winds as opportunities to embrace them.
In the good, we can embrace the fact that we are able to cruise along and really enjoy the ride. Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to savor the moments in life. These are them. We can ride these winds, steering our lives in the direction we desire.
In the bad, we can embrace the opportunities we have to learn and grow. We may not learn much from stubbing our toe. Or do we? We learn where “not” to step. To maybe turn on a light. And more importantly, when we face the bigger challenges in our daily lives — when projects fail, when a meeting goes south, when a customer just won’t budge…these are times when we have great opportunity to learn and grow. If we choose to. The choice is ours, to embrace these moments — or not. If we embrace these moments, these winds that are leading us to change our course, we have an awesome opportunity to really change our projects, our work, our lives.
The next time the winds of change blow in your life, how are you going to handle them?








