Every person is a gold mine
TL;DR:
Container setting (priming, framing, guardrails, mindsets, etc.) can be the different between 😒 one of those “is this a waste of my time” events and 🤩 “this has been a highlight of my year” events.
Storytime:
March 2023. Gray Garmon and Julia Winston have organized an intimate, 90min “Breakfast Party” for creative, curious folks in Austin while SXSW was going on. I get an invite. And I'm JAZZED!!
I drive for THREE HOURS. From Houston. For a breakfast. Yeah!
Daylight savings on Sunday. Early morning on Monday. I’m grumpy. But excitement > grumpiness.
The space is super hip and welcoming. Shoutout to Este/Bar Toti! There are so many cool people.
We start doing a Peer Coaching exercise
🤴🏽... Yall, I’m a facilitator/coach, and I’m a bit of a pro at coaching… so my expectation of the other two in my trio was… high. Ok, ok, unreasonable. Esp. for 9am on a Monday
🥴... And I catch myself thinking... “I wish I was paired with person X”.... “Ugh... is this even a good convo?"
🥴... So much unease and doubt…
🥴... teetering on the edge of zoning out! Zoning out of an event I drove 3 hours for...
And then I remember:
Every👏🏾 Person👏🏾 Is👏🏾 A👏🏾 Goldmine👏🏾
The hosts, Julia and Gray, had anticipated this human reaction. Julia even named it: PIMO! People I'm missing out on! Before kicking off the party, they reminded us to notice PIMO and in that moment to know everyone is a goldmine.
With that, I acknowledge my doubt. But instead of following it, I start to mine gold from the person in front of me, the person coaching me, the person I’m coaching.
The hosts asked us to pause and reflect on the takeaways from the conversation. AND the act of writing "one takeaway" FURTHER HELPED ME MIND THE GOLD.
🤯😭😍 *chef's kiss*
The incredible Breakfast Party crew outside of Bar Toti in Austin. pc: Geoff Duncan
Sharing this as a reminder to you and me:
🏅When we find ourselves zoning out, wishing we were somewhere else, wishing the person in front of us was different:
Let's pause.
Let's notice the PIMO, FOMO and all the other moooos.
Let’s intentionally change our stance to “What is one beautiful thing about X in front of me?”
🏅 Container setting in a group dialogue (as Julia and Gray did upfront) leads to magic. I’ll share more on this another time.