Can you imagine a group of hard driving CEO’s spending a whole week together with spouses “going slow”? Yes, it can happen. It just did.
A year ago at our last retreat in Lake Tahoe, someone asked where we would go next year. There was a long silence in the room. Then, Chuck Tapert spoke up. “Well” he started slowly, “we could go to my place in Belize. You all know I bought this place next door to my friend’s hotel that he has been building. It should be ready by next summer. So, if we plan for early fall, it should for sure be ready.”
Everyone was enthusiastically in for 5 days in Belize and we set the dates. In June, we came to realize that it being the low season in Belize, direct flights between LA and Belize only left on Fridays and Saturdays. So the trip became a week and a few folks had to drop out. Boy, did they miss a beautiful place with fabulous reefs to snorkel in, Mayan ruins to visits, tubing through caves, and just relaxing which is hard for Vistage members to do.
And the people on Caye Caulker were so nice. Maybe it is the heat and the humidity that just makes it sensible to ease along instead of run. Maybe it was taking a week instead of a weekend. What we know for sure is that we are taking back with us a lot of laughs, great memories and a sense of go slow. Even if we revert to a city pace, we can breathe in “go slow” each time we look at a picture from the trip.