My sisters might be gluttons for punishment.

So,

My sisters recently took all 6 cousins on my side of the family to Cedar Point. They’re either extremely cool aunts… or gluttons for punishment!

This was the 2nd year for the kids to be gifted a group trip to Cedar Point for their birthdays rather than adding to the overwhelming quantity of nerf guns, stuffies and STEM kits slowly taking over our houses.

If you’re unfamiliar, Cedar Point is a theme park with roller coasters, carnival rides and the opportunity to spend a down-payment-on-a-new-home’s worth of money on arcade games.

The kids were so excited. Last year, they nervously researched every roller coaster in the park to find out which rides felt appropriately thrilling, but not terrifying… and this year, they felt like experts.

And the problem with any group of experts is, of course, they don’t agree on s#*!. They have different conclusions about the best rides, the best games and the best order to do things to avoid long lines. Some kids are SURE the carnival games are rigged, while others are SURE they know how to beat them because they watched a Mark Rober video about it 14 times.

I had a few palm-to-forehead moments hearing about some of my kids’ impatient moments on that day, but I also empathized! I know the strained internal feeling of group travel - or collaboration in general - when others are moving at a slower pace than I’d like. I resonate with feeling certain my plan is the fastest and best plan… and the other plans are stupid and annoying.

One of the hardest parts of being a person is that it’s really tempting to fall into blind spots of arrogance.

On any given day, we are the oldest we’ve ever been. We’ve experienced as much life as we ever have. It’s natural to feel attached to our own ideas and solutions because we have a clear understanding of all the learning that went into that conclusion.

We don’t know all the experiences and knowledge of others. We can never fully see their math. We can’t know for sure if there are errors in their tabulations or if their conclusion is solid.

Unfortunately, most of the times when we need to move forward with a group, the solution isn’t as simple as “we’ll each take a turn picking a roller coaster.” Life outside of Cedar Point can be a real drag that way.

The core of our work here at the CBC is centered on the challenge of “going far together without completely losing our minds and slowly building resentments that destroy trust and suck all the fun out of work we used to love.”

And while I’ve prided myself over the years with developing more and more tactical, actionable processes people can implement within their teams, I really do think the simplest and best way for teams not to drive each other nuts is for each person on a team to cultivate joy and curiosity in their lives as much as possible.

When your heart and mind have default settings of joy and curiosity, you’ll almost always know what to say or ask and you’ll have a much easier time receiving what other people say or ask without defensiveness or offense. People who are joyful and curious regulate their emotions better, and people who regulate emotion better are more effective when the collective going gets rough.

So as you do the work of going far together, may you find opportunities to cultivate as much joy and curiosity as possible in your personal life. Go to a comedy show. Pick up a new hobby. Say yes more often.

Heck - maybe you should even go to Cedar Point! 

May our lives be filled with more laughter and more wondering. Hope you have a great week,

Andrea