Case Study 116: "The Summer Chocolate Cherry Cupcake"

"There is a season for everything..."

This is the start of a quote from Ecclesiastes that lines the brick wall of my parents' house, under the dogwood tree out back. I can't seem to get it out of my head. 

In my job as a consultant, we have tests for assessing a company's readiness for change. We highlight needs, investigate the culture and determine the best fit approach for an organization in flux.

But in life, things sometimes change suddenly and it's easy to be blindsided. We can study what has happened in so many ways. We can test our hypotheses against what we knew was fact. And we can scrutinize what went wrong, stacking it up against past experiences, and try to resolve the important questions.
 

In business and life alike, the most successful ways to get from point A to point B in a situation is to accept the change, to have a vision and to be fully engaged. Seasonally thematic cupcakes can also help, especially when they are chocolate cake topped with vanilla buttercream and dark chocolate dipped cherries.  

My brilliant mother, whose birthday it is today, always reminds me of the first line in Scott Peck's best-selling book: "life is difficult." This can be a hard pill for most to swallow, but once it is accepted as truth, any change that lands on our doorstep can be worked through. To be human means feeling to the extremes - through struggle, triumph, the happy and the sad - and potentially never fully understanding what any of it really means. To me, accepting this is the basis of awareness, and if anything gets us through change, it's mindfulness and being aware.

 

If there's anything that I've learned in love and loss, it's that life is difficult, but it also goes on. We must be grateful for those extremes, the experiences and the growth we receive for seeing ourselves through it all. 

Summer is in full swing. Picnics in Central Park, alfresco cocktails, rum punch and wild beach nights. I have my vision and I'm fully engaged. There is in fact a season for everything, and fortunately, my changes have come in the right one.