Banana life sandwich

nuggetsoflearning • April 7, 2015

Sorry to be smug but just got back from holiday and had time to read and relax.  My favourite book of the holiday was Steve McDermott’s – “How to be a complete and utter failure”.  As you would expect the title is tongue in cheek and all the learning is reversed.

I will share lots of stories over the coming weeks but one of the most simple and effective is the banana sandwich.

“Two workmen sit down at lunchtime and open their lunch boxes.  ‘Oh no! Banana sandwiches again, what have you got, can I swap?’ says the first workmen to the second.  ‘No I hate banana, especially in a sandwiches,’ comes the reply.  Next day the same two workmen open their lunch boxes again.  ‘Oh no!’ Banana again, please swap’.  ‘Look’ says his colleague ‘I told you yesterday that I hate banana.’  The third day exactly the same thing happens.  ‘Listen,’ says the exasperated second workmen, ‘Why don’t you get your wife to make you something different?’ ‘My wife?’ says the first guy, ‘I’m not married. I make my own sandwiches.’

On my workshops I always use my Step Father as an example on choices, whenever he comes back of holiday there is lot of huffing and puffing and then he says “I have to go into the office!”.  It is his own company a slightly bigger banana sandwich that he created and chose.

With my children we always say you don’t ‘have to do anything’ you make a choice and think about whether it is the right choice and take responsibility.

Stephen Covey always explains that the word responsibility is split into two it is always our ability to choose our response.

So today I have chosen to return to work and I will be having a variety of sandwich fillings.

Don’t get stuck into a routine of the same filling or banana sandwich.

Please do give nuggets a call and we will refresh you as an individual or your team.

bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk

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