Yesterday, I opened one of the many Amazon packages which come to my house from UPS and I see and talk to my Auzzie UPS guy in his summer brown shorts. His gracious smile and his cheery…”…how are today luv, what ya readin?” Always cheers me up. Well, yesterdays offering was a book on “wondering”. As I opened it up to the first page I saw this question:
“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” What an intriguing question. I know for me that as I have grown older that this is not something at the top of my personal list. I prefer things that are “safe” and do not involve things like “sky diving” or “running the rapids and going through the coffee pot in the Grand Canyon”. Don’t get me wrong “BK” (that’s code for Before Kids) I tried in vain to get my spouse to do some of this “first time” events because like the saying goes, “I had NO FEAR!”. Then I became a mother and told everyone I know that: “…I’ll just be over here on the bunny slope…where I won’t get killed by crazy snow boarders…..”
What about you? In business we must be willing to try things for the “first time” or we do not move ahead. Sometimes we are lucky and have a great boss or mentor who will hold our hand and help us through the process. Sometimes we are just given the assignment without a life jacket and we must muster the guts to push our way through our own “biggest fear” in order to get to “our first time”.
Where did you learn that skill? From whom did you learn it? Perhaps you saw it “modeled” before you every week at the staff meeting and next week the boss is gone and you have been asked to run the staff meeting. What have you learned from watching? What is first? Then second? When do departments give their reports? You get the picture.
You see there is always a process or steps to learning how to do something for the first time.
Let me hear you story about your “first time” at something in your professional business life and what you did to prepare.