Greetings Negotiators!

I sit with 40-something year old sore muscles thinking about the word “stodgy” and how it’s applied to me for quite some time. Last night my adopted niece, Corrie celebrated her 15th birthday party in grand style. Her (my) immediate family rented a party boat for her and all of her friends and we cruised north up the Colorado River along a stretch of the river known as Lake Austin.

There were teens to pick up, waiver forms to sign for the youth, agreements to sign by the adults, presents and food to load aboard the party-boat and so on. I remember thinking my stodgy thoughts - “Gawd all this work just for a birthday” and “Why can’t we just buy a cake, sing the song and blow out the candles?” (that’s an example of an unresourceful question). I even asked my wife “Shouldn’t we be spending this money on practical things like a computer or a new desk or some new clothes?” She just gave me that “you’re a he-tard” look and kept preparing for the party.

Well lo and behold - I gathered up the necessary man-courage to help organize this teen river-ride and boarded near sundown. I noticed once I got there that I was…enjoying myself. The Co-Captains of the boat were a married couple who had been doing this for 14 years. I developed a quick comfortable rapport with them and as the time to launch move toward the here-and-now I was having a really good time.

We launched and I saw these amazing mansions on the left bank high atop a cliff (which I video taped). The sun was setting and I felt like I was in some other-worldly heaven. The boat finally weighed anchor somewhere along the river and the teens (and me) all went swiming and diving off the 2nd floor deck of the boat. There was music and food and even enough adults for some adult conversation. After exhausting myself in the river’s current (swimming) I sat there air drying off as the last of the sun vanished from the horizon thinking: “God this is a great life - how peaceful and beautiful it is here.” Then I was inspired “I want a boat!”

The Sunshine Machine at Night

I had grown up on boats as a youth myself and I’m certainly a water baby. The question I’ve asked myself this morning and I’ll ask you as well is this: “What are you willing to choose, to plan, to do in order to live an inspired life? What new experience will you let yourself have each day in order to experience a life driven by and defined by INSPIRATION?”

“What does this have to do with negotiation? ” you might ask? We are always negotiating toward or away from something. The NLP guideline states that “We will move away from pain and toward pleasure. And we will move away from pain before we move toward pleasure.” Inspiration is a resource. It’s difficult to talk about or even think about a resource that you seldom experience. It’s like a made up word that people just use. I was truly inspired last night and I made a decision today to continue to access that resource daily.

To answer your question - I was negotiating with myself. I was negotiating with the universe for inspiration. I didn’t mean to negotiate for that in the time before the boat-experience - I kept telling myself “I’m doing this for Corrie”, but when I got there I was open and willing to experience something new AND I DID!

If you’ve been inspired lately - please share how you got there, what you experienced and what you’ve decided to do since the experience. What does being inspired mean to you?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!