When Jack, the one with the beanstalk, went to town to sell his cow, he came back with beans – magic beans. His mother thought he’d lost his mind, worried about hearth and home, and tossed the silly beans away. But it was in the letting go of the beans that the magic grew.
Two weeks or so ago, I tossed out my so-far-favorite-collage – The Happiness Collage. I’d had it for years, and it took a lot of time to create. My collages are often made of paper and glue and they aren’t sealed under glass – instead they get dusty and damaged by the light. For these reasons and more I took it out on a Thursday morning and leaned it against the rest of the trash, facing the street for all to see.
The Happiness Collage
Leaders make a lot of decisions, learn from the actions they take and grow. Here are three lessons from Jack and the Beanstalk for your consideration:
1) Trust yourself – trading that cow for the beans was a good decision. It just didn’t look like it was to everyone else at the time. My collage looked like a mess to most (and understandably so), but what I learned was unforgettable.
2) Go ahead: toss it away – let go of whatever it is that needs letting go of – you might find yourself climbing a metaphorical magic beanstalk, and/or be forever changed by the growing of something new in your life.
3) Find what you need. Sometimes we have to confront our fears (the giant) and take back what we need. Jack took back a golden harp, a sack of gold coins and a chicken that laid golden eggs. What little somethin’ somethin’ would you like to take back? One of the most powerful treasures I’ve ever taken back was my voice.
Have you ever noticed that hello and goodbye have the same hand signal? Don’t be afraid of good-byes.
Enjoy the stories and have a playful day,
– Mary
P.S. It is June of 2022, and just seeing the image above, even set out on trash day back in 2017, brings a gigantic smile – it truly was and is a Happiness Collage. You never know what you’ll learn on the oddball adventure!
I celebrate typos typos here.
Edits: 6/16/22 – removed an image and link to The Happiness Collage video, added a new PS, captioned the one image left on the post.
