Cloud Hopping

As a parent, I have had to use time-outs as a punishment for bad behavior from my son. I know I am not alone in my use of this type of behavior modification and for those of you that use it, you know perfectly well that it works! I personally view it as a gift although I'm sure my son would argue incessantly that it is quite the opposite. It gives them a chance to reflect on their actions, decompress from the amount of stimuli they have been exposed to and regroup their thoughts yielding a renewed focus on future behavior. I don't know about you, but that sounds like something all of us could use! I think it is important to take breaks from our grown-up world view. We need to regularly experience the world with a fresh set of eyes focused only on the creative use of things in our everyday lives.

This week I had to travel to Dallas for a training seminar and unfortunately had to book my flights at the last minute. This meant that in I had to suffer through non direct flights with not only one, but two stops, extending a 2 hour flight into 5+ hours. With the department expansion effort at work there is plenty of work that I could have been doing but I needed a bit of down time before heading back into the throes of the hectic pace tomorrow. So, I decided to put myself in time-out. I'm certainly glad I did because if I hadn't I would have missed a terrific moment.

After a very brief stop in Amarillo, we headed on to Denver where we travelled through some pretty amazing airspace complete with the most beautiful cumulonimbus clouds I have ever seen (yes, i had to look it up). All at once I felt like a kid again having dreams of being able to hop from cloud to cloud sitting atop the world looking across the vast expanse of blue sky and open landscape. As a kid, I used to think that those type of clouds might feel like big squishy cotton balls and taste like the mist amazing vanilla cotton candy. As we cruised along I wondered what my son, Justin, would think or rather, has thought about the clouds when he's gotten the chance to travel in similar conditions.

For those few moments I realized just how lucky I am. Despite the pressures of balancing work, home, exercise, school, personal time and developing my business, I truly am lucky to have just that one moment where nothing else mattered. Life is good and I believe those few moments will give me the fuel I need to press on for a while longer but, and this is the most important part, with a bit more spring in my step.

Schedule your time-out; you deserve it.