The value of our mistakes
What am I thinking about?
I was in Colombo, Sri Lanka this week to deliver a workshop for a client. Top of mind for me, whenever I deliver a programme, is how to make every session something more than just a tick in the participants’ or the organisation’s learning box.
You see, if nothing changes, nothing changes, and all learning and development programmes can become like our tyre-changing toolkit in our car boot. They are there but we never use them unless we have no other choice. Almost always (in Asia), we call the breakdown service, offered by our insurance company, to change our tyre.
Making learning more than just the tools sitting in our car boot, that we seldom (never) use, is what I am thinking about this week!
I am also thinking about my mini adventure of going by Uber tuk tuk to the client’s site in Colombo. No Uber car was available, so tuk tuk it was! What a (fun and anxiety inducing) ride it was!
Did you know?
When travelling in certain parts of Asia you can’t get into the airport without a ticket or boarding pass.
Many people get caught out! Me included. Airports in some Asian countries such as India and Sri Lanka only allow passengers into airports for security and congestion reasons I believe. In the old days when we had physical tickets, this was not a problem. But in the digital era where tickets are e-tickets and boarding passes are a QR code, life becomes tricky.
I only need my passport to check in at the counter at the airport if I have not checked in online. In most countries that is all one needs to get on a flight because the rest is on the airline’s system! And entry into the airport is not restricted to passengers only.
But in India and Sri Lanka, if you do not have a copy of your flight itinerary or can’t show the e-copy you can’t enter the airport. Especially if you do not have roaming on your phone and thereby cannot access your e-ticket or e-boarding pass life becomes quite difficult.
I learned the hard way on my last trip to Chennai, India. I knew this but forgot. It had been a while since I travelled to India, and I thought they might have changed their SOPs. They hadn’t and luckily another passenger let me hotspot off his phone to open the documents I needed.
Lesson learned and applied in Colombo this week! I was prepared!
Mistakes are often great lessons and ones that we don’t forget!
How do you bring novelty to the mundane?
We all do mundane things. They may not start as mundane but once we have mastered it or it becomes repetitive, the feeling of mundaneness can kick in.
This applies to everything, our work, household chores such as cooking, cleaning, raising kids, and more.
And yet whilst watching Episode 1 of Jamie cooks the Mediterranean - Greece, featured a family that makes a plum dessert where getting to the end product was a laborious process. I shook my head when I heard what was involved. This was a regular family making a family recipe for their own consumption. Not as a business. But the passion in the process showed in the product. It had Jamie saying that it was Michelin-star-worthy!
Here’s the link to the Channel 4 series: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/jamie-cooks-the-mediterranean
So, is it passion? That brings novelty to the mundane.
If yes, how do we bring passion to our work, cleaning, and cooking? Things we may be doing because we have to not because we want to.
I shall leave you to ponder this as I do so too.
Until next time, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com