Laugh a little …

Fear is the most powerful emotion (hormone – cortizol) in our body. It serves an invaluable role when we are being attacked or threatened and sets up the defense mechanisms that we need to live another day. Without it our reaction to a fast car coming at us, for example, would be too slow. But as I’ve discussed many times now, the concentration of this hormone in most of us is awfully high and disproportionate to others. This imbalance keeps us from many equally important experiences to our survival. One of them is laughter.

One-Year Rule

In a recent conversation, I was reminded of a visit I made with an organization I was working with. We were contracted to work with their high potentials and part of the on-boarding process was to assess their business and cultural model. Upon arriving on their campus, my colleague and I got a tour of the impressive sprawl but what caught our attention was an operating mantra that they feverishly lived by. It is called the One Year Rule. Simply described, they frequently ask themselves the question: Is there anything we are doing today that we did exactly the same way a year ago?