“How many times do I need to tell you Aphrodite? Could you please take off those unsightly mortal business clothes of yours and put on your official white deity long gown! You need to remember that you are a Greek goddess, so please dress like one! Apollo, Poseidon, Athena and I, are all sick and tired of seeing you in those brightly coloured short skirts, shirts, patterned stockings and high-heeled shoes! That look might be just fine for those “creative types” that you mingle with surreptitiously in the corporate office below on earth, but up here above the clouds some professional god-like decorum is required! One day, those pesky and inquisitive passenger airlines might actually see you in that coloured attire and our nice quiet world of the perceived theoretical mythology with vanish immediately and we will be inundated with human sightseers!”

“I hear you Zeus, don’t get your toga all crumpled and frazzled! You might start looking as old as you actually are if you don’t settle down and relax! It’s all right for you lot all pontificating about life, the universe and everything Greek up here in your godly world, but without me taking the initiative and dropping down to the world inhabited by mortals now and then, no new ideas or thoughts would ever make it up here into this sterile life of perpetual bliss!”

“Thankfully my “Aphrodite charm” and sophistication makes it quite easy for me to morph into the business organizations I choose to infiltrate where I can quickly manipulate the desires and intentions of their CEO. If you lot followed a similar strategy and moved outside your comfort zone, you might discover there is a vast array of knowledge to be learnt and absorbed down there!”

Let’s park this Greek godly dialogue for a moment and consider the work environment of those fellow mortals (just like me) who may be reading this blog post.

Yes, the key is to make the time and effort to step outside your known networks of understanding. To do this successfully, you may need to encounter some personal discomfort and to accept that your traditional business methods and work practices may not be the best, nor the only way to do things. It is also so important for us all to courageously branch out from our normal and stayed circle of friends and business acquaintances, and to have a willingness to genuinely learn from others. From these new experiences, new and exciting ideas will potentially merge and propagate.

So next time you are travelling on business and are happily looking down on the clouds from your snug and comfortable aircraft window seat, remember that you too are capable of exhibiting that “Aphrodite charm” of creativity and innovation by thinking just that little bit differently!