Good things come in threes
Riddle: what question can you ask yourself at the end of a workshop that gives you three answers? Read on for my answer, which I heard from Hugh van Cuylenberg, Co-founder of the Resilience Project and presenter, on The Imperfects podcast.
They say bad things come in threes but they don’t say over what period of time. The time thing is on my mind, as our family has had three bad things happen this week – two really big, and one quite small. We’ve got our fingers crossed that the smaller thing was part of the three. But we’re not confident about the time line.
Enough of the bad. What I really want to talk about are three good things. Specifically, the three wells of your meetings and workshops.
‘Well’. What do you picture in your mind? When I asked photo database, it gave me pictures of weights, gyms, people exercising and sitting alone looking blissful.
I was looking for a good, old-fashioned well. The type that Haruki Murakami writes about regularly. In an interview with the New Yorker (10 February 2019) he explained his fascination with wells.
“I like wells very much….When I write about the things I like, I’m happy. When I was a kid, there was a well at my house, and I always looked into that well and my imagination grew.”
Photo caption : A new well for a village in Western Province, Zambia, 1997, Jacinta Cubis
Writing down three things that went well at your meeting or workshop can make you as happy as Murakami. And if you do this at the end of every workshop, you will get as much mileage from them as he does in so many of his books.
As Hugh van Cuylenberg explains, ‘…if you want to be good at something in life you've got to practise it'. He encourages people to write down three things that went well – at the end of the day, a meeting, a conversation, an event – to build a habit of gratitude. A habit that helps to bring you joy.
How good is that. You can feel joy after a meeting or workshop, no matter who came, what they said and what they ended up with, just by asking yourself one question – ‘what three things went well? - and writing down three answers. You don’t even need paper. You can write it on the wet wall with your finger in the shower, as van Cuylenberg does.
For me, ‘what went well?’ is easier to answer, more specific than ‘what am I grateful for?’ The latter just feels too big and it ends up being repetitive. And it feels a bit ‘woo’ after a workshop. So it was validating to hear van Cuylenberg say similar on The Imperfects podcast.
The three wells don’t need to be big. Little ones will do. Maybe ‘the coffee was great’ or ‘the whiteboard was clean’ or ‘there was lots of space to move’.
And where did I find the picture for my story? If you read my last yarn, you’ll see that I’m still drawing on my old photo albums, also known as ‘procrastination aids’. I found a real well in a village in Zambia. It was 25 years ago but I can still feel the joy the community got from this new well. Before the well, women and girls had to walk miles previously to collect dirty water in buckets. After the well, they got heaps of time back, as well as clean drinking water. I’m disappointed that I can’t put a name to either man’s face. But I bet I know which one Murakami would like to be.
I started this story with a riddle: what question can you ask yourself at the end of a workshop that gives you three answers? Please share your answer with me. The first one to reply with the right answer gets a complimentary 15 minutes with me to ‘ask me anything’ about your workshops or facilitation. Just reply to this email with WELL in the subject line or send your answer to jacinta@jacintacubis.com.
P.S. If you would like help to get more ‘wells’ from your workshops, book a clarity call with me here click HERE
P.P.S. I wrote down the names of people I met and photographed in my tattered notebook, long since discarded. I looked on the back of the photo to see if I’d written any names there. All I found was the F-stop I used to take the photos 🤦.
Links:
The Imperfects podcast
Hugh van Cuylenberg talks about gratitude practice on Luke Darcy’s House of Wellness 18 August, 2020
Deborah Treisman The Underground Worlds of Haruki Murakami, New Yorker, Feb 10, 2019
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