Power of the preFIX

What if the root of our problems is in how we begin? 

What if we decided to start the task, the moment, the conversation differently? To build anything beautifully alive and inspiring– be it a marriage, a childhood, a bouillabaisse or an ad campaign– it must begin with fresh eyes, a clear mind and an open heart. No shadows of past experience and future projections.

The challenge is not so much the building part but rather what must be destroyed in order to begin truly fresh and free. No dragging around old baggage around pretending it’s useful. No grabbing another day by the horns and wrestling it from morning to night. No that’s just the way it is.

This is no easy endeavor.

We don’t start the day with a blank slate. From the moment we open our eyes, the day is already PRE-loaded with expectations and assumptions. PRE-programmed with personal bias. PRE-populated with orange warning cones and yellow caution tape.

We have eaten too much, loved too little, failed to achieve, succeeded at exhaustion. Or, on those more rare occasions, we are kicking ass, crushing it and secretly wondering when it will all crash.

Either way, we begin locked and loaded with yesterday’s leftovers.

It’s impossible to create fresh innovative possibilities handcuffed to old agendas.

So, we trick ourselves into thinking we will just FIX those and then we can start fresh. But it is a trap. There is no then. Then is the cheese beyond the rat wheel outside the cage. And those multiply exponentially like mice on Viagra.

This is why we must PRE-fix our day.

And since demolition precedes construction, we begin with UN.

UNspool the laundry list to do, the no way around this, and can’t possibly avoid that. The absolutely need to and should definitely not forget to.  

UNlace the girdle of holding it all together, being on top of it all, putting up a good front and keeping up appearances. It’s exhausting, self-imposing and perhaps if we actually stopped, we’d find it– together.

UNsee the path we believe we must follow to get ahead, the formula we have been given for success, the tools we have collected to be happy, the culturally accepted guidelines for how to behave.

Just for ten minutes.

Just in case the door to change is unlocked.

Just to allow enough time for RE.

REimagine the trajectory of the day as if our job was to be the messenger of joy, the mailman of delight. As if our success would be measured by our experience of wonder. As if we’d be rewarded according to how much we played and smiled.

REdiscover the invisible energy currents that reveal magic in the mundane, that turn fallen twigs into ant playgrounds and accidental paint drips into abstract rain art, that illuminate profound beauty in imperfection and give voice to what has none.

REignite the fire of YES, the spark of CURIOSITY, the flame of DESIRE. The IF without the THEN. Without the accompanying trail of tasks and strings of obligation.  Pure warmth. Unconditional illumination.

What if we began our day looking at this horizon.