Good morning, Team!  It’s Friday!

This has been a rough week for me.  I’m saying goodbyes to many of my colleagues.  My contention is that when logic and emotion battle, emotion always wins.  I resort to logic as an engineer so depending on the arena, I lose whenever emotion is heavily involved.

I’ve been blessed in so many ways in my lifetime and my awareness has been peaked recently as I step back from two primary commitments in my life.  Things are getting emotional and I’m a fish out of water.

Like everything else in this world, when one door closes…another one opens.  I’m standing in the proverbial hallway with my fictitious hearing aids “maxed”, waiting to hear that next door open.  I’ve had the chance to visit with several colleagues from my latest commitment who have shared their heart … and in turn, melted mine.

The most impactful story involved a colleague who broke bread with me this morning in another city and shared her inspiration about converting her “mess into a message” and challenged me to do the same.

I love the phrase but the meaning behind it involves a lot of healing, a lot of learning and a lot of work.

Perhaps you’ve read a phrase I learned where “we judge others by their actions but ourselves by our intentions”.  So if we start to own our actions and contemplate our mess, maybe we can convert it to a message worth sharing.

Allow me to take a baby step and report that I resent having given up my childhood for our family contracting business.  Even though it taught me responsibility and the value of hard work at a very early age and I had little choice to change it, I feel robbed of my childhood.  My mess becomes my message each time I hear of a well-intended parent, child, boss or employee who mistakenly places too much emphasis on work rather than family.

•Take care of family.

•Work will be there when you get back.

•Ignore the nay-sayers who don’t know the full story or have yet to experience this level of love and commitment.

(Easier said than done but doable when the boss encourages the heart.)

As leaders and mentors, it is a primary responsibility to prevent unnecessary heartache and pain by warning others who struggle with priorities, who value our opinion and need to hear thought provoking questions to shape decision making rationale.

More messes and messages to come.

Have a blessed weekend!