In December 2008 while visiting St. Louis, Missouri, I accompanied my friend Erin to an interfaith center she frequents. Following several hours of meditation, during which I was moved to tears by emotions stemming from a recent broken engagement, I walk into the Social Gathering Room with Erin and encounter an "intuitive energy worker".
"What do you do?" she asks. "What's your story?"
Automatically falling into "business networking overdrive", I begin explaining the services I provide, and how under the umbrella of my I've been jokingly considering renaming Enterprise Management Consulting, Pink Elephant Partners...
"Oh my God!" She exclaims, waving her hands in front of me while bursting into laughter. "You're the pink Ganesh...you're the pink Ganesh! (link to Ganesh, or a blurb) You're the remover of obstacles...that's who you are!"
At that moment I experienced clarity like I had never experienced clarity before, and my entire life made sense. The pink Ganesh is who I had been all these years for management teams, friends, and family though prior to this conversation, I had never recognized it in that context. Of "Indian decent", I had known the statue of Ganesh as a symbol of prosperity and good blessings but never as the remover of obstacles! Suddenly, my life had a renewed purpose and there was rejuvenation of a journey that I have always been on...
The vision was crystal clear: The Pink Elephant symbol in the home of every family, in the office of every executive, on the desk of every leader, constantly reminding them of the Courage and Commitment to Communicate. The invocation sets the stage and the reiteration of the promise sets context for the conversation. Imagine a world that has the courage and skills to courageously communicate and be fully self-expressed...where creativity, innovation, collaboration, and cooperation are possible; where people feel acknowledged, heard, relevant, known, and part of whole; where solutions can change the world.
This world is possible...all from a simple, playful movement called the Pink Elephant Project.
