Karate Chop!
For the past 3 years, all of the Managers in Texas gather once a year in Austin to go over the previous year’s performance as well as discuss the new and ambitious goals that we have ahead of us for the new year. Not to mention we have to go through the yearly rite of passage of presenting a PowerPoint presentation to the group (which is always nerve wracking for some reason). Well, this year was a little different, and different in a good way. This year, there were no presentations! But most importantly, we spent pretty much the entire time on team building. Now I know some people aren’t a fan of team building, and that’s OK. However, this year our planning team hit the jackpot with the team building.
We wrapped our meeting up with a motivational speaker named Doug Hanson, and while I haven’t historically been one to fully buy in on motivational speakers, this one hit the mark, and it was for multiple reasons. Mostly I think it was because I happen to hear him speak at a time in my life when his message really hit home as well as he taught us how to break a 1″ board with our bare hands.. Karate Kid style!
The board breaking was pretty cool considering I never thought to try it myself, and much less actually think that I would be able to break it. The other part was that we were all gathered in a big circle and and we took turns stepping into the middle to break our board in front of the group. Keep in mind that this a combination of all the Managers and Directors across the Region, so it was slightly nerve wracking. But! To see everyone out there cheering for each other and actually getting excited each time someone busted their board, it was really cool (In a totally unexpected kind of way.), and it really helped to get you psyched up as you’re mentally preparing yourself to try and thrust your hand through solid wood.
Now I’m definitely not walking away from all this with the feeling that I can break anything I put my mind to (even though I did break the board in half), I did realize that it’s more in my head than I originally thought. And the faster I realize that in just about every other situation, I figure the better off I’ll be.
