Our story begins with banana bread


Once upon a time, there was good coffee and homemade banana bread waiting for you early on a weekend morning. Somehow, although the weekend would be full of travel and challenges, time slowed down as you bit into the fresh, soft goodness. It was good. You were good.

That's how our story starts. Whenever we gather for a course or event, I bake banana bread. Even the people who don't eat the banana bread like what it means for their weekends: you're starting from home; someone cares; you do have the energy for what you want to accomplish.

It's hard to arrange this for yourself. If you bake your own banana bread, it's doesn't come with that little bit of surprise. If you seek it out at a favourite cafe, you get the treat, but not the same sense that it was made with you in mind, that it's reaching out like a hug. The public space is not often an anchor to home, and the public banana bread is not often exactly what we need to take us home.

People take my courses so they can be their best. What they find is that their very best depends on finding good ways to connect. We can't tickle ourselves, and we can't surprise ourselves on purpose, and it's often hard to cheer or focus or change our own minds.  But we can get ourselves to somewhere where someone else will make the tea or coffee and hand it to us with a smile.

And if there's fresh banana bread, that's even better.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Yes" sets for building agreement and manipulation

The hypnotic contract

The fine line between observations, suggestions and commands