Breaking the ice
Richard Martin
CEO of the Mindful Business Charter, Principal Consultant at byrne?dean, chair of the Steering committee of the Lord Mayor of London's This is Me campaign, author, FRSA, mental health champion, coach and MHFA instructor
“Brew Monday” is next week, the day when the Samaritans encourage us to sit down for a cuppa and a chat with someone. It seems a good moment to share a simple observation I made in my garden before Christmas which might have an obvious resonance with our human interactions.
In the UK we had a cold snap in December – several days of sub zero night time temperatures. I don’t think it got colder day by day, it just was consistently cold for a while. On the first night the water in my (very modest) pond froze over. The next morning, I broke the ice. The same happened on day two and again I broke the ice. I didn’t bother the third or fourth morning. Come the fifth morning the ice was pretty thick.
And so it seems that, even without it getting appreciably colder, if ice is forming, the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes to break. So… maybe use the occasion of Brew Monday to break some of that ice. It is amazing what the comfort of a shared cup of something hot can do.