Fortune Cookie Wisdom

The following is another article I wrote for my employer's newsletter, which is appearing today:

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

The other evening my husband and I ordered some Chinese takeout, and at the end of the meal we cracked into the highly anticipated fortune cookies to see what our futures would hold.  The message on my tiny strip of paper was this: “A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.”  As I read these words I chuckled at the irony and immediately nodded my head in agreement with this statement.  I chose to take this message as a reconfirmation of the strength and lessons I have gained from past experiences instead of a foreshadowing of any future events.  I also chose not to toss this little message, but instead decided to hold onto it as a gentle reminder for use in all personal and professional areas of my life.

So what does this message really mean?  “A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.”  I tilled those words around in my head, and to me it means this: 

Sure we all think we would love to sail through life on calm waters, myself included, but it is only when we sit back and review the tumultuous waters that we have sailed upon that we realize it is only by those trials in life that we learn.  In other words, it might only be as a result of that big career mishap that you learned a lesson such as due diligence.  Or perhaps you learned from a potentially embarrassing situation with a client the lesson of quick thinking.  Maybe you hit a quandary with a particular job task that has given you the skill of problem solving, or a conflict with a colleague that has taught you the art of diplomacy.  I bet there are many other useful skills that you have learned throughout your career that even you do not realize.  And where did you learn these skills?  I would wager that it wasn't from calm waters. 

I believe we all need to learn to look at these challenges as opportunities to learn and grow as individuals, both personally and in our careers or vocations.  So the next time you feel as though a Tsunami is going to hit you, stay calm, take a deep breath, pull out your compass and dig deep into your bag of finely tuned skills to navigate through your next crisis.  And by all means, don’t forget to enter your new skill in your sailor’s logbook!