Take a deep breath. . .

I was looking at my 3 year-old daugther this morning while she was sleeping. I couldn't get over how absolutely beautiful she is. I tried to burn that image into my memory, so I can call it up everytime she does something that makes me want to scream. Being 3, that image will be well used!!!

The other day she did something wrong and I told her to sit in the other room until she was ready to say Sorry. A timeout, I guess--although I still think of it as a punishment. She sat there, doing nothing but staring into space for 20 minutes. Finally, I walked in and, not saying a word, I walked up to her. Nothing; No tears; no sorry, nothing....finally I asked, "Are you ready to say you're sorry." She said "yes, Sorry" and slid down down off the chair and went to play. Ugh; pretty sure I lost that round. She's got her mother's patience and focus. I'm in big trouble.

But this morning I was rushing to get out the door for work. She was giving me the "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy....etc" I fought my knee-jerk 'parent' response of an annoyed "WHAT!" And instead, calmly asked What? She wanted to remind me to take a banana for breakfast, as I sometimes do, but was about to forget on this busy morning. Take a deep a breath...

What does this have to do with anything? I don't know. Maybe I just need to remind myself to take a deep breath, sometimes, and look for the lemonade, instead of seeing the lemons.

We need more creativity

I took my family to Disney World last week. It's wonderful to see a place like that through the eyes of a 3 year old. Walt really knew what he was doing. Part of his creative genius was understanding that you needed to create something people would love, rather than trying to make people love something you created.

On a professional level, the highlight of the visit was a presentation on Walt's life at the MGM park. I never realized how important the role Roy Disney played in the success of Walt Disney Enterprises. Roy was the money and business man. It was the perfect marriage between the creative dreamer of Walt and business savvy of Roy. I think that is what Disney is missing today. Now that new leadership is coming the company needs to get back to what made it great -- creativity, dreams, starry eye wonder, giving people something to love.

I guess it was summed up best by my daughter as the Walt Disney presentation came to a close: "Can we go see my Ariel show now?"