One of the dubious pleasures of crawling up the organisational hierarchy was the requirement to attend a succession of courses on how to be a manager and later, a leader. The various personality profiles, preferred working styles, 360 degree feedback and inevitable personal improvement plans all tended to blur into one so by the end I began to suffer leadership development fatigue.
But I cannot honestly say that they were not of use. I do remember in particular learning on one course about the need to look after and regularly keep topped up physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy. And that each for different reasons needed attention.
A recent trip to France gave me a heaven sent opportunity to attend to all 4. Being with the family was the emotional well-being, Abbot Christopher Jamison’s latest (finding happiness) ticked the spiritual side, whilst a week’s snowshoe walking in the alps was a double whammy – getting up the mountain did for the physical whilst the tranquility and settings more than helped recharged the mental box.
The Abbot’s book was a good way into lent and not too heavy that it could not be fully digested on a holiday. But as I slogged up the mountain side I was struck by the “different-ness” of my surroundings. And then I thought some 50 miles west, beyond Geneva it probably looks more like Kent (ie green) than the Antarctic. And then that the margins between a comfortable environment and a harsh one are perhaps finer than we sometimes assume. Go up a few hundred feet, travel a few hundred miles north (or inland) and life could be a lot less easy unless we adapted to it. We are blessed to have such a comfortable environment – and we shouldn’t take it for granted.
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