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.

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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,

There is an idea that identity is built independently of relationships, not within them.*
Leslie Bell

Who will we become?
Who will we be of service to:
and who will we help others to become**
Seth Godin

My becoming has been through encounters with others,
Though many develop wary or anxious of such contacts,
The world grows richer as we receive and seek to share –
It has always been so.

(Perhaps reflect on those moments something important happened in your life, noticing those who were close at that time.)

*Sherry Turkle’s iGen;
**Seth Godin’s This is Strategy.

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The stories of gods or heroes descending into the underworld, threading through labyrinths. and fighting with monsters, brought to light the mysterious workings of the psyche, showing people how to cope with their own interior crises.*
Karen Armstrong

Mythological images are the images by which consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That’s what they are. When you don’t have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part.**
Joseph Campbell

If I were to tell you my myth,
It may first appear as a chronicle
of what has happened to me and
my understanding and response to
the life events I now call home.

My hope is that it might also appear as
my modus operandi, the way
I will continue to journey—
Energy for exploration and transformation,
a strategy for regeneration and creativity.

(How do the stories you tell yourself allow you to create both a centring and an adventure?)

*Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.

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Your art places you in the world.*
Nick Cave

Learning is a journey of incompetence.**
Seth Godin

First, the good news:
If you have identified your “art,”
You will never be lost,
You know what to do.

But it won’t come easy,
All at once – beautifully completed;
It will mean mess, failure, being ignored.

Be of good heart:
This calls for honing, not giving up.

(Name your “art,” being general at first because it won’t lead to just one thing— then name the possibilities.^)

*Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Don’t steal the revelation;
^It is unlikely that your job title describes your art.

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The best way to achieve freedom is to take responsibility for the actions you’re taking. And the best way to be clear that you’re taking responsibility is to highlight the externalities and own them.*
Seth Godin

Living in accordance with your values is never finished, it is a lifelong journey.**
Steven Hayes

More than what we have, freedom
is what we make possible for others, including
Sister Earth.

Values outlast us, and great values
call us into adventures for a lifetime—
The freedom of life-in-all-its-fullness.

(Perhaps take a few moment to write out your values, and reflect upon the adventures they make possible for you – and for others. If you haven’t got the time, what might that be saying about your freedom?)

*Seth Godin’s blog: Embracing externalities;
**Steven Hayes’ A Liberated Mind.

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Time does not pass for the infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning of a period of time. It is the beginning of an event that gives the time within its specific quality.*
James Carse

A stable, balanced life is a life losing energy – and so is a stable, balanced city.**
Richard Sennett

The finite game has an end, its players
move relentlessly towards it—
Expending their energy.

The infinite game comprises endless beginnings, its players
seeking to be present, surprised, and becoming—
Endlessly regenerated.

(We all have our finite games, but knowing what our infinite play is, we can more generously contribute to the former. What is your infinite play?)

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling.

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Enough comes from the inside.*
Ryan Holiday

Direct your eye inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered – Travel them, and be
Expert in home cosmography**
Henry David Thoreau

Others write and thereby forge
spacecraft for journeys of exploration,
Their interior shaped by my daily quietness and journal,
Enabling voyages of discovering and understanding
Through my little charted into interior where
I endeavour to find I am enough.

When I look outwards,
I find I am surrounded
by countless universes of wonder.

(What if you understood your reading or listening to be spacecraft for discovery? How would you shape the interior space for deeper understanding, reflection, and transformation?)

*Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key;
**Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; adaptation by Nicholas Bone.

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And there is a meaning to destiny – destiny is as essential to the meaning of life as is death. Within [their] own ‘exclusive’ sphere of destiny every [person] is irreplaceable.*
Viktor Frankl

We care most about the things we have struggled to understand.**
Leon Festinger

It’s all about
journey.

The time and effort through experience
committed to arriving here.

Each values
their own journey the most.

Looking back, you understand
this is your destiny.

You have made it so— and
it is your life.

Seeing destiny as something we forge, what is yours?

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul; made inclusive by me;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling.

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The items you get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse.*
Steven Pressfield

five phases of creation: inspiration, concentration, organisation, implementation, and sustenance**
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When we leave our ego at the door, as
Steven Pressfield imagines,
We are left with much.

Visiting the home of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio,
I stooped to enter his studio, the low doorway being
a physical reminder to begin by humbling myself.

Beyond lay a magical space, and
through humility lies unalloyed
love, and will, and passion to do what we must.

We all have different work, each
with an alternative low entrance we can
choose to lower ourselves through.

And on completing our work, Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us to
sustain ourselves— perhaps in many small ways, be delighted and
thankful as celebration, and then provide yourself rest.

*Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work;
**Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves.

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If a prophet is put on any kind of career track or staff org chart, his or her whole role and mission will be distorted or even destroyed.*
Richard Rohr

Abraham’s migration is not just a story of the past.
It is an invitation
To hear the whisper.
To trust a vision.
To become part of a journey that began with
stars and still burns in our bones.**
AleXander McManus

The prophet isn’t the person
who mouths off at every opportunity.

The prophet embarks
first of all on a personal journey.

Something is wrong and they are concerned—
Even angry about it.

Then they enter their sadness,
And their empathy and compassion grow.

Their words and actions, now heard and seen, are of
hope and love.

I have a sense that many more prophets will appear
in these crazy days.

This journey will be our measure,
And the measure of others.

May I invite you to ponder,
What are you a prophet for?

*Richard Rohr’s The Tears of Things;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments.

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