Doug Eadie has created a new blog – Entwined Lives:  Reflections of a Returned Ethiopia Peace Corps Volunteer.  You can check it out at:  EntwinedLives.com.  The blogs that appeared on this page as part of the Addis Ababa Homecoming series have been removed from this page and are being re-posted at the Entwined Lives blog.

In my new book, Leading Out-of-the-Box Change, I talk about the normal resistance many, if not most, people, have to contend with in getting major change initiatives accomplished in their organizations and their lives.  As I say in the book, experience has taught me that fear – for example, of failing to perform up to standard, of being exposed as inadequate in some important way – is often at the heart of the resistance that can impede or even halt change.  And in our book The Blind Visionary, one of four major lessons Virginia Jacko and

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people. – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

When my taxi from the airport arrived at the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I was feeling uncharacteristically apprehensive. The purpose of my first visit to the Miami Lighthouse was to officially kick off a major consulting project. In a few minutes I would be meeting Virginia, who had been the Miami Lighthouse’s first blind president and CEO since June 2005, after serving in an interim, pro bono capacity for the prior four months.

Visioning – painting a picture of the life you aspire to lead over the long run – is one of the most powerful tools for growing and enriching your life professionally and personally.  However, experience has taught me that you shouldn’t think of visioning as a straightforward planning exercise.  I’ve never come across a person who regularly updated a formal, personal vision statement, and I can’t imagine formally updating my own vision on a regular basis as part of some sort of personal strategic planning process.