Leadership Perspective number 1. Life is like GroundHog day.

[James]

I wanted to utlize this forum, in my nonexistant free time, to present leadership stories, perspectives and share ideas.

The first one is looking at the Movie Groundhog day with Bill Murray as a metaphor on life.

In the movie Groundhog Day, our hero is stuck repeating the same exact day over and over again. Everyone else is reliving exactly what they did before, only he realizes what is going on and is able to change his behavior.

At first he goes a little crazy pressing the boundries of his day and going off the deep end.

Then he creates a routine that betters him as a person. Knowing that each day is the same, he adds something to each new (for him) day that increases his competency in a certain area of his life.

He adds French poetry, the french language, and piano playing. He also focuses on every intimate detail of his environment until he masters it.

Ok ok ok, so what does this Comedy have to do with us? Well surprise every day is Groundhog Day.

80 percent of the time or more we do the same things on any given day. We see the same people, eat the same foods and even engage in the same types of conversation.

And we do this year after year with very little change. Patterns change from semester to semester, job to job , or location to location, but they rapidly fall back into that same day pattern.

What can we do with this knowledge?

Well once we come to this realization we can gain a great deal of mastery over our lives and activities.

if I change what I am eating 80 percent of the time, I can change my physique.

If I am aware of where I am going and who I talk to 80 percent of the time I can start making changes to go to new places and meet new people which opens up new opportunities.

Sicne I am paying more attention to my time I can start adding things into my schedule that weren't there before and create competencies.

If I add weight training 3 times a week for half an hour I change my body. If I add a new language to my schedule 4 times a week for an hour I gain a marketable skill. I can do the same thing with a computer skill, or set aside an hour a few times a week for Writing that pesky novel.

[b]Ahh but where to start? [b/]

Well you need to keep a log and write this stuff down, otherwise its hard to make a sytematic change.

But if you actually took a moment and wrote down where you were today and yesterday and what at times as well what you were doing there. You would have a general idea of your pattern those two days. And you could mentally compare it to those two days for the last several weeks.

Can anyone see how useful this perspective might be? How it can be used in your own life? Or maybe your chapters?