Break the Circle
authors note: this post originally appeared in 2011 as a guest post on Brain’s On Fire’s blog however on the 2nd anniversary of my youngest daughter having a healthy heart, re-sharing this just felt appropriate as it’s a humbling reminder of how fragile our lives are.
It’s amazing how unanticipated life challenges typically end up becoming the moments you remember most and are most grateful for once they’re over.
Last Friday, an unexpected crisis came soaring in my wife and I’s life when we learned that our unborn baby (known as baby #3 as this will be our third) had a rapid and irregular heart rate that required immediate hospitalization and treatment to bring the rate down to a “normal level”.
Once the shock of the moment passed, we had the opportunity to meet with a pediatric cardiologist who diagnosed baby #3 with Atrial Flutter. Which basically means that the baby’s heart was stuck in a fluttering circle in the top 2 atriums resulting in a rapid heart rate. In other words, this “circle” caused the heart to beat twice on the top and only once on the bottom.
While the cause of Atrial Flutter is widely unknown, the solution is fairly simple: break the circle by slowing the heart rate down.
Slowing the heart down isn’t as easy as it sounds, but through medication, prayers and ongoing monitoring it can be done and the circle can be broken.
I know by now you’re probably wondering: why should I care about some guy and his baby that I’ve never met and how does this apply to me and my life??
After countless heart ultrasounds,echocardiograms, doctor consultations, 5 nights in the hospital and the ongoing sound of my unborn baby’s heart beat pounding in the background I came to several realizations that we all need to be reminded of. So, here it goes:
4 lessons learned from the Beat of a Heart:
1. We all need to slow down.
I know it can’t just be me who is moving too fast. We all need to stop, slow down and think about what is actually going on.
“Why does this work, right now matter?”
“Should I be spending my time more efficiently on a project or initiative that’s going to have a greater impact?”
“If I just stopped for 1 second and looked from the outside in, what would I see differently, what would I change?”
“How can I make more of less?”
2. Life is a miracle, every beat matters.
We’re so busy — — we forget that we’re even breathing. Take a moment today to appreciate that your eyes are open, you’re breathing and your heart is pounding.
Not only is our life a miracle, but so is our business. Be grateful for your customers, they are your heartbeat. Every single one of them matters.
3. When you give love, it comes back to you.
The bottom line of life is that people just want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
What my wife and I saw these past 5 days wasn’t just a miracle, it was a team of doctors & nurses who “all wanted to be a part of something bigger than themselves” — saving a friend’s life.
It’s amazing what a little love can do. Sure it’s a doctor’s “job” to save lives, but it means so much more when they care about the life they’re saving. Now, it’s something bigger. Something real. Something they can believe in.
How? How do you make people care about something? Start, by loving them.
The pediatric cardiologist that we first met left his house at 9:30pm on a Friday night just so he could talk with us and give a diagnosis. He didn’t have to do that. And, my wife and I knew it. So, we told him how much we appreciated him going out of his way. After we told him ‘thank you’ we’re almost positive his head fell off his shoulders. It was obvious that no one had ever thanked him for his work before. This small gesture of love and appreciation resulted in “above and beyond care” that we’re convinced we wouldn’t have received otherwise.
You can do this too. Thank your customers. Give them love. It will come back to you.
4. Breaking the Circle creates Freedom.
You know what saying I hate? “Let’s think outside the box”
What does that even mean?
If we want to be effective and innovative we need to do more than just think. We need to act.
It doesn’t seem to me that we’re stuffed inside a box. I think we’re all stuck in a circle that desperately needs to be broken.
We’re in a routine. We don’t like change. And, we just keep going faster and faster, taking on more and more.
The problem with a circle however, is that you’re not ever going anywhere. You’re a hamster on a wheel.
We need to break the circle. We need to escape our mundane routine and start to act differently.
The only way to break it, is to slow down. Once we slow down enough we will be able to evaluate and exit. Then, the freedom will come. Our mind will be clear, we will look at things differently.
And maybe, just maybe our heart will start to pound to the beat of a different drummer.
How will you slow down this week?
orginal post here: http://www.brainsonfire.com/blog/2011/10/11/break-the-circle-guest-post-from-dan-holm/#sthash.9ZEjJJw6.dpuf
