Strategy isn’t a map. It’s a compass. Strategy is a better plan.*
Seth Godin

Radical engagement involves feeling our way forward to discover, open up, and work with cracks.**
Adam Kahane

Before the certainty of a map
there is a compass–
Trust your insight, shaped
by talents and values and energies;
These will show you the way through
the next-to-nothing
before you.

The most exhilarating experiences in your life so far were daring.
Your proudest moments were overcoming struggle.
The best happiness comes after some pain.^

(Our talents, values, energies, these are honourable, increasing our insight. How might you hone these in the new week?)

*Seth Godin’s This is Strategy;
**Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems;
^Derek Sivers’ How To Live.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

THE NOTES (behind the reflection):
We follow maps, but maps can’t show us everything.
Travelling with a compass and eyes wide open is more valuable.
Talents show up because we have taken the time to play with patterns of skills, a lot – we can accurately identify our talents in thirty minutes – it takes a lifetime to grow them, mind.
Further developing of talents hone them into strengths.
Strengths bring together ability, strong experiences, and passion.
On the other hand, a weakness may be a practised talent, but because our heart’s not in it, the experiences haven’t become more nuanced and flowing.
Values are not goals, but are hopes that are bigger than our lives; we can never achieve them – as we move towards them, they grow bigger.
Energies refer to those activities and spaces and people that send our energy spiking, but we also note when the activities and spaces and people that drain our energy away.
These sharp spikes of energy identify what I call enriching environments that not only do we prefer and grow as a result of, but our talents cum strengths enable us to create them.
The things that make us feel as if we’ve lost all our energy and will never regain it, identify what I name enervating environments; if we were Superman or Superwoman, this would be our kryptonite.
It is super-important to notice these because they sneak up on us– if we cannot escape them, we must learn how to manage them.
The best way to manage is to meet them with our strongest self.
Of course, one person’s enervating environment may be another person’s enriching environment.
All of this – talents, values, and energies – mean that we gain a good feel for where we are and what we must do; we can trust this.
Opportunities don’t appear before us as big open doors and bright lights– it’s more likely an itch, a crack, a glitch in the Matrix, and we have to work with this, but if you have noticed the crack, and trust who you are and what you have, then you will be able to do something,