On his 1981 album, “Double Fantasy”, the late John Lennon wrote in the song, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”, a lyric that I embraced as both a simple yet profound insight on the human experience: “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” In the subsequent decades, I have expressed this message thousands of times and at one point even included it in my official signature block while a senior US Army officer.
Imagine if you can then my shock and disappointment that this profound statement that I had been attributing to the Beatles sage was actually first used in 1957 in an issue of Reader’s Digest by a man named Allen Saunders. Years long before the Beatles launched, this was a period when Lennon was still likely being musically inspired by rock 'n' roll pioneers like Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. Ah, but I digress.
It is not what one decides to plan for that usually emerges as the point of failure in life. Instead, it is the “what happens while…” that more times than not leads to personal dysregulation, stress overload, system incoherence, well-being degradation, and at worst, mental and physical collapse. This is where Trellis Life Management intercedes and impacts with a positive force that changes the lives of individuals through organizations with performance enhancement and regulation.
At Trellis, we energize performance and well-being. We do this by improving the way that each team member responds and reacts to stress. We see the whole person, work with the various sub-systems in play, and enhance the entire Brain-Mind-Body System (BMBS™).
This is the most effective way to enhance well-being and performance--individually and in teams, groups, organizations, and ultimately beyond. Societal change begins with the individual and while we are certain we can meet those needs our objective, however lofty, is to change humankind.
I encourage and invite each of you to join us on this journey. While I cannot guarantee you an easy sojourn, I can say it will be one filled with change, growth, evolution, and the realization of boundless capacity.
Written by George Reynolds | Trellis Co-founder, Coach, and U.S. Army Veteran