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Think back to the days of Christopher Columbus. There was a time when we thought that the world was flat. Within this world-view (or context), travel was a dangerous thing. Move too close to the horizon and you could drop off the edge of the world! The belief that the world was flat brought with it limitations and dangers that simply vanished when we changed our minds. When we came to believe that the world was round – and it was nothing more than a change of mind – life expanded in a burst of movement. Commerce exploded, cultures migrated, things once held to be impossible soon became a way of life. In the blink of an eye, reality as we had defined it ceased to exist and was replaced by a far more vast potential – the possibility of more and greater and further, to move into what we were capable of becoming. All of this simply because we changed our minds.

What if, in the world of work, we believe we are living in a flat world? What if that world isn't really flat, and its limitations are of our own creation? What if the world of work is really round and holds the potential to invite and nurture health, humor, compassion and truth? What if it's not work that holds you back but your own context for thinking about work? Imagine the alternatives if you were to change your mind. Change your mind and you change your life!

Power resides in the capacity to choose, not in the choice itself. The cultures we have grown up in have ill-prepared us to even know the meaning of choosing. Rarely do we know how to distinguish between an option and an authentic choice – one of our own creation. We are well trained to follow the rules: to consult with authority; and to defer to the collective view. We are not encouraged to challenge the status quo but to embrace it: to run with the pack rather than to travel alone. Survival is in the collective, in the group-think and the group-speak. This perspective is destined to limit human expression since the process of embracing the status quo leads to eating your own tail. Eventually, you disappear.

And we are disappearing. Our capacity for joy, for play, for delighting in our own existence is rapidly disappearing. We have become slaves to our own rules. Once again, we live in a time when the masses are controlled by a handful – whether in work systems, community systems, religious systems, or our own homes. The very thought of having to think for ourselves, without the benefit of precedent to follow or handbook to consult, causes beads of sweat to form on our brow, and our stomachs to burn and churn. We have become dependent on antacids and antidepressants to get us through our days – and worse, our nights. We have lost our nerve for trusting our own intelligence – our own wisdom. We no longer trust our ability to navigate by the stars of our own inner truth. No case study will ever give that back to you. Rigorous analysis will not give you back your nerve. That is something you must take back – by instinct, and alone.

Like you, I was trained to believe – without question – that work was no place for the personal. Work was professional and feelings were personal. At the very least, bringing my feelings to work was "unprofessional"; if not worse, it was a symbol of my total ineptitude and lack of discipline. Objectivity and emotions were mutually exclusive. And yet today science tells us that objectivity is an illusion, that the observer affects the observed. That indeed, the observer is a part of the very formulation of what we experience as the product.