As an entrepreneur, you need to bring a balanced leader to the game every day. To successfully do that requires a constant system check of your mind, body, and soul, and when you spend your days solving the most important problems to your organization, it takes making time for activities that feed a healthy mind.

My mind is extremely visual and caught in deep analytical work at all hours, and it requires a feeding of images to keep the creative fire roaring. I think with images, I draw images, and I explain solutions with images. As a 10-year old, I was eager to buy my first camera, and I have rarely been without one since. And now, with excellent cameras in our smartphones, it’s far too easy for me to capture cool and unique images as I am experiencing them.

Today was a beautiful day in San Francisco, so I spent the morning with the challenge to rediscover a piece of the city that I have not explored lately. Sounds like quite the challenge for someone that has lived in and around SF for 23 years, yet I made it very simple and achievable. I walked around corners that I never noticed before, walked behind AT&T Park without the typical baseball crowd and peeked through chained linked fences and dusty windows of vacant buildings that I hadn’t noticed when they were full of businesses.

Not only did I walk away seeing new things, but I couldn’t wait to sit down and dig into today’s work. Mission Accomplished. My mind was rebalanced and reignited.

Here’s a Mission for You:

Get out of your car and walk. Look for something new, old, different. Observe people. See shapes and colors. See nature. Sit and watch the world spin out of control. Capture things that stand out. Take time to wonder why. Why did the proprietor of this café put a dreamcatcher chime in the tree?

Watch. Listen. Learn.

The Goal:

Walk away with a lower heart rate, a new way to look at your most pressing issues, and a renewed interest in creating solutions. Also, find the inspiration to create a new opportunity, and most of all, walk away with a refreshed mind that is ready to tackle the next challenge that comes your way.

Let me know how it goes.