When you are centered and aligned in your “being,”
the next step in the “doing” becomes clear.
She said, “I love the idea of what you are talking about, but how do you actually do it in today’s world?” He said, “We are way off on our numbers for this quarter. Things have to change, but how?” They said, “We know what has to be done, but somebody please answer this simple question: How do we do it?”
In today’s complex, rapidly changing, and unpredictable world, many approaches, practices, and policies of the past are no longer working. No society or culture has ever been where we are now. No one has been down this particular road before. While many “experts” are happy to regale us with their opinions and advice, the truth is that, for most of our current challenges and opportunities, no one truly has the answers. We’re just finding our way as we go.
The wise ones among us realize that the days of knowing “how” – of having all the answers up front, or of being able to make a detailed, long-range plan and then stick with it – are gone. They recognize that in many cases today, all we can do is sense the greater potential waiting to unfold, and follow it. The wise ones listen, observe, and intuit the next step. They trust that when they take that step, the next one will be revealed. Furthermore, they trust that, if they follow the potential and do their part, things will come in their own time.
You may have experience with this yourself. Perhaps you’ve accomplished something big in your life – something that others may have said you couldn’t do. Yet somehow you did it anyway. Take a moment to reflect back to when you started pursuing that dream. Did you know from the beginning how you were going to do it? If you had a plan, how far into the plan did you get before you had to throw it out the window and start improvising?
In Transformational Presence terms, most “how?” questions are coming from the horizontal plane of awareness – the “doing” perspective, the realm of the intellect. The intellect is masterful at analyzing and organizing. However, it’s not so good at discovering. Discovery is an intuitive process. It belongs to the vertical plane of awareness – the “being” perspective, the realm of intuition. Discovery happens when we are able to step beyond what we know already and open both our inner and outer senses to be shown something new. Discovery depends on our willingness to not have the answers – sometimes to not even know the questions!
As long as we are focused on what to “do” next, we can’t really access the intuitive, creative, innovative mind of the vertical plane. Asking “How?” can, in fact, become a trap. We end up trying to solve something based on where we have been or what we already know rather than on the potential waiting to be discovered.
It’s time for a paradigm shift in how we approach challenges and complexities. The invitation today is to expand beyond all we “know” – the facts and figures and analytics – and listen to the essence of the situation. I’m not saying we should forget or ignore what we know – it’s about expanding beyond what we know, recognizing that there might be more to discover.
Problems and challenges are just symptoms that something is trying to shift or a breakthrough is ready to happen. Our job is to tap into that shift intuitively and let it show us the way forward. Again, very often, all we will see is the next one or two steps. Rarely will we see the ten-step plan from the beginning. The new paradigm asks us to expand our intuitive awareness and trust that we will be shown each next step when the time is right.
We humans like the security of knowing where we are going and what we are doing before we take the first step. However, that security is a luxury that we can less and less afford. We have created a world of incredibly complex, complicated, and confusing systems. Many of them are not working, and they are beyond fixing. In fact, they don’t want to be “fixed.” They have broken down because their time has past, and now something new wants to be created. Our job is to pay attention to that potential and become stewards for the new structures waiting to be created.
How do we do it? We start by asking three simple questions:
1) What wants to happen here? Or, what is the greater potential hidden underneath this situation?
2) Who is that potential asking me to be?
3) What is that potential asking me to do?
The key is to ask the questions in that order, and to not move to the third question of what to “do” until we are clear about the first two. Then there is nothing to figure out. Intuitively we just know. The answer to “How do we do it?” begins to reveal itself.
P.S. If you want to learn more about accessing the vertical plane of orientation and having more access to intuition, creativity, and discovery, a good place to start might be Chapter 4 of my latest book, Create A World That Works. If you don’t have the book, it’s available through our website store, on amazon.com, or in bookstores everywhere. It is also available in digital format for most e-readers, including Kindle, iBooks, and Nook.
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