On Salads


Salad is boring. Even when it's good, salad is never as exciting as pizza, or lasagna, or a sandwich. 

I love pizza, lasagna, sandwiches, bagels, and don't get me started on chocolate chip cookies.

But...right now I'm eating a salad. Eating salad is not about the adventure. Or rather - eating saladas is about anticipating and preparing for adventures to come.

A bowl of lettuce is, I'm told, much better at preparing you for adventure than a bowl of cookies could. (Yes, bowl of cookies. Don't judge.) 

If you've been following me, you know I've related resumes to pizza. I've related bagels to motivation, pancakes with growth, and pasta sauce with team building. 

Now, as I stare down at this bowl of salad, slowly getting tired of so much chewing (seriously, how do rabbits do this?) I can't help but wonder: how do salads relate back to our careers? What are the things we do to keep our careers "healthy"? What are the things we do to lose career "weight"?

How do we anticipate and prepare for adventures we may or may not predict? This isn't about growth - as I said, that's what pancakes are for. This is about being in shape, and working off the weight that comes with eating so many pancakes as you try to perfect the recipe. 

Seriously, salads require so much chewing it's given me adequate time to have the epiphany I needed when I started this post.

Salads are retrospectives.

Salads are looking back at all the cookies, all that pasta, all the sandwiches, and thinking: I should do better. Salads are about asking: What worked well, what didn't, what should #change? 

Eating a salad gives you the time to think intentionally about past mistakes, past successes so you can lose the baggage, shed the "weight", and turn the experience into something concise and actionable.

Salads turn past adventures into readiness for what's to come.

And... as is evident by all this chewing... salads require time.

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