When you hit that one area of planning (Define Results, Map Actions, Transform Behavior) that seems dumb, scary or impenetrable, an emotion, thought or physical sensation will herald the arrival of the Adversary. What is the Adversary? It is that part of you that runs a countercommitment that up to this point has been as powerful as your commitment to write a good plan, to achieve it, to push yourself into realms where no man has gone before. The Adversary fears the unknown. It loses its grip there. And so it stealthily stalks you continually with thoughts and emotions you think are yours to keep you where you are. In the known.
A good plan by definition takes you into the unknown. If it doesn't you are not creating, you are reproducing. If you are not creating, you are not a leader. You are a reproducer (which isn't all bad, if you know what I mean).
The Adversary may try to torpedo your planning with a thought you mistake as your own. Something inside you may say, “This
is stupid,” or “I don’t know how to do this,” or “I don’t understand”, or “I
don’t have time for this,” or “This is for sissies,” or “This is for corporate
people,” or whatever. Whatever the voice says, it will be saying this isn’t for
you. It is for people dumber (self-importance) or smarter (self-pity) than you.
Could be true, but you might want to poke around the edges of it before you go back to planning like you always have, only to produce the same old results.
Or, the Adversary may trigger anxiety in your body, the almost irresistible urge you have to get up and move, go “do” something (bleeding off energy through activity vs focusing energy through action). And you tell yourself you’ll come back to it knowing full well if you do the game is over and you have failed yourself once more.
Or it isn’t a thought or a physical impulse but an emotion that wells up—anger (as in, why am I so stupid! Or, Why is this so complicated!), joy (as in, let’s party and NOT do this... there's always next year), fear (as in, Oh sh**, what if I actually do this?) or melancholy (as in, I've never been good at this. All I do is let myself down. Here I go again...).
Yes, something will likely happen as you hit the one aspect that is your current planning Achilles Heel: It will come initially in thought, or in physicality, or in emotion. And believe me, when the first one fires the others get activated. Watch for this. Keep your wits about you and don’t be so naïve as to think that planning is first and foremost a logical act. It is not. Planning is equally psycho-logical.
Okay, so you notice the old thought, behavior or emotion the Adversary has squarely aimed at tubing your planning so you stay stuck right here, in the known, with it in control, and repeat this year pretty much what you have repeated every other year in the past. Now what? Good question. So what do you think the solution is, my friend? I only see one option and it is slap-dead simple. Muster the self-discipline and self-regulation to withstand the attempted death-blow and simply step over it or around it. Stay put. Punch through it. And give it my all. In other words, suck it up, kick some arse and show the Adversary who’s boss. Got it?
“Chance favors the prepared mind,” Louis Pasteur
Prepared you now are.
In admonition one, I told you your plan by default will be imperfect because you are and to step over your worry about that. I suggested that you simply work from where you are and what you think you know. And that then, through taking action, your imperfect plan will be continually perfected through that action. And so with you.
In this second admonition I've told you that part of your blind spot—impacted by your self-deception—has affected your planning in the past and that you may come up squarely against it here. I’ve suggested that you remain alert—like a cat watching a mouse hole—for the first thought, emotion or physical agitation aimed at tubing your planning process (again). And I’ve suggested that you muster from within the depths of yourself the power to absorb (or step out of the way of) the attempted blow, and in a second act of inner leadership that you muster self-discipline and self-regulation to stay with and step over and just do it even if it makes you feel like you are going to jump out of your own skin and run. Or, to put it even more simply, to kick some arse and stop that foolishness.
Before I wrap I want to speak to those of you tracking with this at a deeper level, but who may not be really clear on what you are picking up on.
What I am saying is to use your heart to contain your mind when you are planning. When you are purely logic-based, you are in your mind. When you are caught in your emotions, you are in your mind. When you are swinging between your logic and emotions, you are in your mind.
When you are silent, still, presencing, intuiting… feeling, you are in your heart.
The heart
is the place from which to plan: it should guide your planning and inform your mind. The heart center is your T-1
connection to spirit, not the mind. The mind is not just in this world, but of
(identified with) this world. Interrupt your identification with the mind, and
connect to the Greater Plan through your heart, and your little plan, over
time--through the irrefutable clarity that springs from watching the thistles or figs your works create--grows ever more aligned with the Greater Plan. Your will is not quite so important any more. Your plan is not so little any more. And your spirit flows free and clear through your action.
Also, when the heart leads planning, the mind can assume it’s rightful place, which is to figure out how to execute the direction the heart senses. The funny thing about the mind is that it wants to run the show and yet instantly becomes terrified when doing so (because it knows it is useless leading in the unknown). The heart, now that is all the guidance we need to map out the unknown our plan brings us up against and takes us in to.
What is the mind's role? The mind is the heart's ally, a brother-in-arms essential in formulating the actions required to convert the unknown into the known, but not responsible for leading that act.
I hope that helps those of you tracking this at a deeper level get the deeper implications you may be sensing. Now, let's wrap.
I encourage you to go all the way through the process I am about to share with you now—every single step all the way through—because you may find—having thrown yourself into the fires of the planning forge—that you have gone where no man has gone before. After all, no man or woman has gone there before. Not exactly. And if you do not go there, leader, if you do not map it out, no one will ever have. No one ever will. And there will be a hole in this universe, a gap in the collective intelligence with consequences you cannot imagine and yet are responsible for. That’s my belief, anyway. You are entitled to yours. :)
“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to
unfold.
That is how important you are.”
Eckhart Tolle
Now, let's light this candle.
