Over 30 years and hundreds of capable clients from every walk of life,
we found ourselves responding to the concerns of caring, committed people
who were all wrestling in some way with life and work.
With what are you wrestling right now?
“This time, I was determined to get it right.”
Do you have every good intention AND sometimes struggle with following through?
We all do.
We saw it again and again. Dads who wanted to be good fathers, people who wanted to be good bosses, spouses, friends, employees, co-workers or pastors, yet behavior—theirs and mine—falls short of our intentions.
We often think we are doing a good job in these many domains until shocked to learn otherwise.
Perhaps we have been rowing merrily downstream unaware of our impact; have not checked in with our important constituents; perhaps we or others are conflict avoidant and have not conveyed our unmet expectations.
Perhaps we or others harbor a wound of unforgiveness that keeps an invisible wedge anchored between us. Habits, assumptions, perceptions, formative learning, conditioning and more get in the way of our deepest satisfaction.
None of us wake up with the plan to be insensitive or ultrasensitive, irritating or irritable, impatient, critical or temperamental. Stuff happens. And we stumble. I know I do.
Proactive self-examination is so important, and a main reason we created WhitesSpace.com!
paying attention to what matters most
Besides encouraging self examination, we identified a recurring theme surrounding attention.
With as many stimuli and competing demands, to what do we give our attention—our default or our carefully chosen direction?
I remember a former Fortune 50 CEO saying to a group of fellow leaders in transition, “It’s as if I got on a train twenty years ago and I just kept riding.
It never occurred to me to question if I was on the right train, headed in the right direction, or if it was time for a different train--not until now.”
Again, we return to the idea of whitespace—mentally, emotionally, spiritually--and its sparsity for so many. This, too, became a great motivator behind whitesspace.com —to provide a space for people to pause and consider what train they are on and if it will get them to the destination of their choice in this season of life or if it’s time for a new train in a new direction.
“I really do want to pay more attention to my spouse and kids…”