Medium Short: Milestones & Millstones

Polishing the tools to move forward, lightly

There was mist on the river the other day as temperatures dipped way down once more. I love the beauty in these suspended water droplets that make it hard to see clearly, yet hard to look away. (Photo by me.)

Welcome to the latest Medium Short, a weekly accountability practice highlighting what I am reading, writing, and doing along the unmarked trail towards #IndustrialHealing. By the way, all my articles are freely available here.

This week my inner work tools were pressed into service. They always need polishing and brushing up. But they’ve been especially needed of late to navigate the humans. (Why not the cat? A question for another time.) And they’ve been essential for the daunting task of Getting The Work Done.

Hence the week’s reading, writing, and doing centered on these tools to get past key milestones and shed unhelpful millstones. Here’s what gave (and took away…)

Reading: cheaper than therapy

Most of my reading time this week was hogged by corporate disclosures for the JBS Matereality assessment (see Writing and Doing, below). However I did read this piece from Penelope at Earth Converse which I thought was like a free therapy session so I share it here:

A good separation with nature

I recommend reading the ending poem out loud. Although we won’t have Penny’s beautiful accent (we can go to her podcast for that!), giving our own voices to such words has its power, too.

I also found Lauren A. Jeffery’s piece about influencing other people helpfully timed. Even though I’m not a financial advisor (her primary audience) the ideas are universally applicable and worth remembering for my own behavioural evolution, as well as how I may (or may not…) influence others.

Cracking Open the Closed Mind

Incidentally, as a consultant back in the day I would often conclude that what the client needed was not a competitive benchmarking…