Side By Side At The Sea

Reflection: Welcome to the first Pause message of 2015. I hope your year is off to a great start.

I find it hard to believe that this is my fifteenth year of creating and sharing these weekly Pause missives. That’s a grand total of over 700 messages encouraging readers to pause for renewal, appreciation and insight.

I must admit recently I’ve experienced mixed feelings about this weekly commitment. Some weeks I’m like a kid in a candy store, keen to share an experience, an insight or a resource with you. Other weeks I’m like a lumbering ox shouldering a heavy yoke, feeling the weight and burden of coming up with something fresh by midnight Tuesday.

I tell you this because I like to be honest about the way things are, and also because I want you to know that I’m rethinking my options with respect to Pause. Continue? Stop? Simplify? Change frequency? Shift direction?

Where it’s going, I’m not sure. I had hoped I might have a resolution to that question by now. But I don’t. I’m still mucking around in the swamp of possibilities. And, that is not my favorite place to be.

I’m much more comfortable with a decision and a direction. But, sometimes a solid answer takes its own sweet time; and it’s OK not to know.

Action: I’m guessing that on occasion you, too, may find yourself in that swampy stew of uncertainty wrestling with one issue or another.

At times like this, I have learned the value of patience and the impact of a well-crafted question.

Warren Berger writes quite eloquently on the subject of ‘A Beautiful Question’. He defines it as an ambitious question that can shift the way we think and spark changes in direction.

Beautiful questions can fire the imagination, spur creativity, and lead us to test possibilities in the face of uncertainty. They usually start with words like why, what if, or how.

In my case, a narrow version of my question could be, “Shall I stop or keep on writing Pause?” A more beautiful question could be: “How might I share what I have to say and what others need to hear in the most effective, least stressful way?”

If you’re struggling with an issue yourself, try crafting your own beautiful question and see where it takes you.

PS – I’ll keep you posted as I make my way through the swamp!

Quotes Of The Week: It’s not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer. – Albert Einstein

Questions wake people up. They prompt new ideas. They show people new places, new ways of doing things. – Michael Marquardt

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. – Dr. Seuss

Resource Of The Week: Check out this series of articles for more of Berger’s ideas on creating and using ‘Beautiful Questions’.

PS – Special thanks to Pause subscriber, Ian Otterbein, for sending along this link and reminding me of Berger’s work.