I would love to say that as soon as you let go of the old world were curled rapidly into the brave new world that we're supposed to get to that the change is aiming us at. However, I would be wrong in saying that. As we slowly extricate ourselves from the past, things feel increasingly unsettled. And we are starting to get into the world of being literally in between real bridges calls this phase of transition, the neutral zone, but there's really nothing neutral about this, the image on the screen to pick someone between trapezes and it's an interesting and helpful analogy in some ways. When we are in between here, we've got several concerns. I know at least, I have several concerns.

One would be, am I still too fat to fly and secondly, is there another Follow me. So we're first of all concerned about our personal safety. The second thing about this image is, in some ways this works in that we were hanging on to a Trapeze and that was the old world. And we can expect to find a new world in the form and shape of the trappy. He's an ideally it will show up at the right time at the right place. Now, the fact is with trapezes is they're too far apart to be able to hang on to the one from the past, and grab on to the other one, which is, of course, where all the magic in the circus and trapeze acts come from.

But the reality for some of these changes is, well the old world may indeed have been a crappies, the new world isn't going to be a trapeze, and it's not going to show up on time, in a predictable way. It may be a little red wagon, it might be a bike, it might be a jet plane, who knows what it will be. And that's part of the challenge of being in Between here. Now, you may not know about this, but you do, actually, because you've been in this time in between many times in your life, there are two essential challenges that we have to deal with. There's lots of things that we need to deal with getting through this time in between. But the two central challenges have to do with the neck, if you will, safety.

And the second part of it is, what am I here to learn? How can I explore increase my appetite for creativity and learning and innovation. So let's look at each of these separately. Safety first. And of course, this goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We're not going to be all that ready, willing and able to learn stuff if we're scared to death.

So safety first. Simply accepting the fact that we're in between clean and we're not going crazy and we're probably not alone is a really helpful thing. Doing things we're good at remembering that There are some things whether it's playing a guitar or walking the dog, or writing novels or something, do those things that we're good at. Because in this time in between, often our self confidence can take a little bit of a hit. So it's important for us to be really clear about our capacity to get work done, it may be helpful to put a pause on additional projects right now, it might be a good time to try things just on a temporary basis. So maybe it's a temporary budgeting, maybe it's a temporary work arrangement.

So just for now, some things that we can count on during this unstable, unsettling time. So we don't want to raise the bar. We want to be very realistic around our capacity to get work done. And we may find some nagging questions coming Is this really the work I want to be doing? Is this really the place I want to work? Those questions are coming up for a reason.

And, and rather than, you know, just dispel them as if we're losing our mind, we're not, let's just let them sit for event. And maybe we can unpack them and wrestle with some options, and so on. Don't make any big commitments right out of the gate. But this is all very normal and natural in this time in between. So if we've got a reasonable level of safety, then we can focus on what are we here to learn? How can we increase our appetite and our willingness and ability to learn things, be more creative, be more innovative, simply doing much wandering, trying different things, is fully justified and frankly, it is a huge opportunity for new insights.

That can take any number of forms. So maybe it's going to a favorite restaurant and ordering something You've never ordered before. Better yet. Go to a favorite restaurant and have the waiter or waitress order for you just try new things. Pick up a book that you wouldn't normally read. Pay attention to strange reoccurring things that seemed to show up.

Because in this time in between the messages for the new way, the New World forward as we want to pull and get to that new world quicker, will show up in strange ways that we may not be used to paying attention to. The other thing that's really important is don't be afraid to ask for help here. We've got to really increase our exposure to situations and people that we normally wouldn't have access to. So go for a little field trip in your organization into a different division or a different work group or a different geographical location. Start to Hang out with other people that might lead you into different avenues that you've never explored before. And what's really critical here and the research on this has been outstanding, actually, we've got to find ways to play more because when we play whatever play means to you could be golf, could be yoga could be whatever it might be.

Different parts of our brain start to fire up. And we will find insights into all kinds of fascinating things. Recently, I've been involved in long distance road, biking, and I find that as I'm out on a training ride, not thinking about work related stuff at all, some idea will pop up in my brain, literally, I'll have to stop and make a note to myself in my phone so I don't forget it. And then I can completely dismiss it again because I've got it written down and then get back into the Zen like reality of life just in cycling. So this opportunities to play can be incredibly helpful here.