Month: November 2012

How often do you ask someone, how was your day? and get the answer which is a litany of complaints or dissatisfaction?. If you are me, you not only hear it from others, you say it yourself. In a discussion with a friend, I thought what would it be like if you asked, “What was awesome about your day?” think about the empowerment you could create through one question. There is a movie I love that shows the family at a kitchen table talking about the High/Low of their day. What a great way to talk instead of “What did you learn in school today?” or “How was your day?” Let’s all be mindful and remember,  What you do, say, and think matters. Make sure what you do moves things forward, not backward.

Confession time. Though I adore Kermit the Frog and The Muppets in general. I have to admit I never really saw the appeal of Elmo. I thought he was red and loud and squeaky and really the antithesis of Kermit. How wrong can one person be?

Really, really, REALLY wrong. On Saturday, I was wearing my Muppets as Beatles on Abbey Road, t-shirt, so my music teacher told me about a great documentary I should check out called, “Being Elmo”, a great story about the puppeteer who created the famous muppet. Not being a big Elmo fan, I was skeptical but thought, hey maybe they will talk about Kermit. I sat down ready to “endure” Elmo’s genesis to get some Kermit/Jim Henson tidbits. What I experienced was a great story about someone following his dream to work with Muppets on Sesame Street. He had a dream and followed it and took wonderful chances and made great personal sacrifices. Not only did this man work with Kermit Love, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz he was respected by all of them and a lot of other people. He does work with the Make A Wish Foundation and countless other organizations that are actively engaged in making people’s dreams come true and I found out when he created Elmo he was told by Frank Oz to find a hook, the one thing that would make that character work, and so he decided it would be about love. Elmo always loves you, Elmo is always happy to see you. What I learned much to my delighted surprise, Elmo embodies all things Kermit, just in red fur not green fleece. Color me Tickled.

Think for a second about the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare-

Slow and steady wins the race, you hear that and think yes, but I KNOW I can do it faster, or use this shortcut or find a quicker way to do this task, why would I take the time to slowly, methodically do it?  Well the answer is simple. You hurt yourself by giving up the opportunity to learn. Think back on the last time you had something you had to do that was difficult, there was a process to get there and likely it wasn’t rocket surgery. Now, after you completed your difficult task, did you get a feeling of accomplishment? Yes and no shortcut would be nearly as satisfying.

In our society of hurry up and go, its very tempting to use a microwave when a crockpot will do the job much better.