Lessons from Lamaze
June 19, 2009
by Karthik Gurumurthy
Today Shobana and I attended the Lamaze class. One of the highlights from our instructor Marcia is, pressure is good. She was addressing to the audience who are expecting couples to work through their childbirth in a way that is mutually knowledgeable, satisfying and supportive. One of the most common questions the couples had was, "Is it normal to feel lot of pressure"? Is that OK?
I can see what Marcia meant with the business endeavor we are working on.Pressure can actually enhance your performance. Your power most fully exerts itself when the heat is on. Who you truly are only surfaces when you place yourself in a position of discomfort. Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best - and most brilliant - self. Please stop and think about that idea for a second or two. Easy times don't make you better. They make you slower and more complacent and sleepy. Staying in the safety zone - and coasting through life - never made anyone bigger. Sure it's very human to take the path of least resistance. And I would agree it is pretty normal to want to avoid putting stress on yourself by intensely challenging yourself to shine. But greatness never came to anyone normal. (Bill Gates, Rich DeVos, Mahatma Gandhi, Richard Feynman and Thomas Edison definitely marched to a different drumbeat - thank God).
I love the story of famed explorer Hernando Cortez. He landed on the shores of Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1519 and wanted his army to conquer the land for Spain. Faced an uphill battle: an aggressive enemy, brutal disease and scarce resources. As they marched inland to do battle, Cortez ordered one of his lieutenant’s back to the beach with a single instruction: "burn our boats." My kind of guy.
How fully would you show up each day - at work and in life - if retreat just wasn't an option? How high would your reach, how greatly would you dare, how hard would you work and how loud would you live if you knew 'your boats were burning' - that failure just wasn't a possibility? Diamonds are formed through intense pressure. And remarkable human beings get formed by living from a frame of reference that they just have to win. Ask new <>s Suresh and Sandhya Partha.
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