Water Ripples
I’ve found myself having the “mind like water” discussion over and over with colleagues and clients in the last couple weeks. It’s a notion I borrowed from David Allen, which he borrowed from his martial arts training.
Picture a still body of water. Throw a pebble into it, and you get little ripples. Drop a boulder in, and you get huge waves. Water always reacts appropriately; you never get huge waves cascading from a little pebble. Water never overreacts, and always returns to calm.
As we get stressed, we tend to overreact and fail to return to calm. We give small details undue attention, and avoid larger issues we should be paying more attention to. The “mind like water” challenge is keep our responses proportional to our inputs.
