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Greetings!
Spring is here and that means hope springs eternal again!
I
have written two articles for you. One continues the epic story of a
boy who becomes a true hero, and the other one is an excerpt from a
presentation I did at the breakfast orientation for Leadership Calgary.
Because the two articles are slightly longer this time, you may want to consider printing and reading them at your leisure.
Best Regards,
Chris
P.S. - Since I will be going on vacation early next month, my next newsletter will likely arrive much later.
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Human Venture : Once Upon a Time of a Leader's Journey (part II)
He felt the roots of the trees
Pull him into the earth.
Reality dissolved into dreams.
Thoughts became elusive fantasies.
Louder and louder
The dead screamed and howled
Until he thought he would go mad.
With
this wonderfully amazing human brain, we have received the gift of
consciousness. But as Joseph Campbell suggests, we pay the price of two
realizations. One, the revelation that one day we, individually, and
all we care for will die. And two, that society to whom we owe our
upbringing existed before us and will continue to exist after we die.
Yet
somehow in our Western civilization have become fixated on the first
realization such that we have an almost obsessive fear of death.
Looking younger, living longer, or having more becomes the only
reasonable balms of life to avoid the frightening specter of death.
Surely, death alone makes a poor source for meaning.
Read part I of the epic tale of the boy who becomes a man
Read part II of the epic tale of the man who becomes a hero
Download and print the entire tale
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Chris's Corner : In Search of Humanity's Story
...about Leadership Calgary
**From my presentation on Leadership Calgary at the Breakfast Orientation at the Hyatt**
Three
years ago I embarked on a much needed retreat back to Europe where I
had once lived. Accompanying me was an old friend from the
past... a large book that was a collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's
writings.
There was this wonderful transformational moment in
this little known town in the valley of Slovakia called Banska
Stiavnica. It had taken a few friendly Slovakian women who didn't speak
English to guide me through two bus transfers and a windy road to get
there. But there I found myself in a small bench in a quiet garden
where I sat alone for a few hours reading Emerson.
For those that know his prose, it is dense but beautiful and moving when you're ready for it. What he said to me was:
"Be
not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep
and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power,
with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old."
In
that moment of silent communion with a spirit of the past was the birth
of a new part of me that realized I had to chart a new course guided
not by my social status, my friends, my family, but by the light of
something more eternal. Humanity and life was calling me to do more.
Read excerpts from my speech about Leadership Calgary
Download and print the speech (yes, it's a bit long)
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The Truth About Innovation
"Don't worry about
people stealing an
idea. If it's original,
you will have to ram it
down their throats."
- Howard Aiken
Want to learn more about innovation? Click here for an upcoming course!.
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