Pure Protential Musings: 111009 - How big is your window

In management process improvement, we often talk about the "windows" we and the company uses to view the world. Each of us looks at the world through our own custom window. The size and what we see from our window is determined by our life experiences, and how we like to view our world. Things outside of our window view are not seen by us. If a feature is not within the view of our window, we can not see it. Some of us know there is more outside the view of our window, others prefer not to know, or really do not know. Things coming at us from outside our window's view, tend to surprise us, because we never saw it coming.

Some of us see only a small part of the world. Our window of the world is small, so we don't see much. I once had a teacher who told her class that she knew her view of the world was small, and she did not know about a lot of the bad things in the world. She told us that made her happy and asked us to not try and change it. She was happy that way.

Others work to make their window as large as they can. They study many different fields. For me the Internet has become a library filled with knowledge, and misinformation at times, for learning. My dad used to say, "if you reach for the sky you know you might not get there, but at least you will get some place that is a little higher up than you would otherwise."

That does not mean that I do not have my window change on me sometimes. When times are bad and things seem to not be going well, sometimes my window gets small again and is only filled with rocks and thorns. When health fails, money becomes tight, economy is bad, politicians squabble, the wolf quit coming because there was not enough food here, and it does not appear that it is ever going to change, the window views seems very rocky and thorny. If I let my window's view remain there, it would be a hard life.

It would be easy to just get the keys and lock the window tight, setting the window frame in stone, and hide. I know some who have let their fear do just that. However, I know that setting the window in stone makes it hard to change the view. Adding a lock means that only I can change the view, and if I lose the keys, it may take a jackhammer to get the view changed.

So what does your window look like? Is it made of wood and you can enlarge it? Does it look only upon the bad parts of life or does it have a little sky showing? Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadians friends, and happy Columbus day to the rest of us here in the US. Here's hoping that we all keep the window unlocked and the view pretty.

One of my favorite quotes I saw today, "Learn for the mistakes of others because you will never live long enough to make them all yourself." -Anonymous