To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning
Bertrand Piccard, Swiss psychiatrist, balloonist and adventurer, in his recent TED presentation speaks of his plans to fly around the world in a solar powered airplane. In his personal crusade to rid our dependence on fossil energy, he wants to break the paradigm that “the certainties that we have can be thrown overboard.” In a motivating and captivating talk using his balloon flying experience as a background, he provides great leadership learning on exploring the possibilities in our life.
He explains that to steer a balloon we must understand that the atmosphere has many different layers of wind which all have different directions. To change direction in the balloon, or in life, he says, we need to change our altitude. Changing altitude in life means ”raising (ourselves) to another psychological, philosophical, spiritual level.” To change altitude in a balloon, he says, there is ballast. When you drop it, you ascend. Similarly in life, if we are to go to a higher level in our lives, we need to throw off our own ballast. This ballast he describes as the “habits, certainties, convictions, exclamation marks, paradigms, dogmas” that hold us back.
If we look at life through this metaphor, Piccard suggests that: “Life in not anymore just one line going in one direction in one dimension. No, life is going to be made out of all the possible lines that go in all the possible directions in three dimensions. And pioneering spirit will be each time we allow ourselves to explore this vertical axis,… that means explore all the different ways to do, all the different ways to behave, all the different ways to think, before we find the one that goes in the direction we wish.” We can experience and explore life’s incredible dimensions and possibilities in all its facets. We can truly fly to new heights!
With these possibilities revealed he concludes with a challenging question for each of us in our life's journey: “Which is the ballast you would like to thrown overboard which will be the altitude at which you would like to fly in your life to get to the success you would like to have, to get to the point that really belongs to you, with the potential you have and the one that you can really fulfill, because the most renewable energy we have is our own potential and our own passion." Fill your life with passion. Cast off those things in life that hold you back from achieving your fullest potential. Change your altitude to experience life's richness. And have fun doing it!
Have a beautiful day and a magnificent week!!!
Mike