Building a Landmark

 Today, a wise man told me to be comfortable with not knowing exactly what to do next.  The advice today was to resist the “Blue” energy in me, the piece of me that likes lists and steps and processes.  More and more, I am learning to turn down that side of me.  Although it commands a good deal of my energy, the truth is…it drains me.  And that was my big revelation today, post-advice.  

I thought about what he said for a while after we hung up the phone, and I realized that this part of me that requires the steps to be written out isn’t a part that I enjoy all that much.  I have it turned up way too high, and I understand now that I have to turn it down a few notches.  There is a time to navigate by landmarks and a time to navigate by step-by-step directions.  Now is the time to look for landmarks.

I use the landmark analogy because after I hung up the phone with my wise and caring mentor, I went upstairs and picked up one of the books I am reading.  I just bought “Unfolding the Napkin,” Daniel Roam’s follow up to his book “The Back of the Napkin.”  In the intro to the book, Daniel uses the example of getting from point A to point B in a city in a foreign country.  There are four ways that someone can tell you how to get where you are going: by giving you a “narrative” set of instructions (walk to the river, hang a right, walk until you get to the gas station, turn left…); by giving you step-by-step directions (left on Fourth, Right on Walsh, left on Washington, right on Main…); by giving you a map (highlighting the best path on a literal map); and by giving you a significant landmark to walk towards (like the tallest building in town because point B is right next to it).  Reading the example made me think about what I want right now: a landmark.  I want the biggest freakin’ landmark in the city.  I just need to build it.

That’s really the point, isn’t it?  We all need a landmark.  We might have a preference in terms of how we get there, but, in the end, it’s a landmark that provides us with focus.  And it’s a landmark that we need to build for ourselves.  Nobody else will build it for you.