We Can't Know How Things Will Turn Out at the Start. We Can, Though, Follow Our Hearts.
First published on November 5, 2021
We can all listen in life for the opportunities, the invitations to step up or step in.
Sometimes we will know them for what they are, sometimes not.
Sometimes we will have a sense of why we are called to something, of what part of us makes us the person, in these perfect space-time coordinates, to take hold of what is waiting to emerge.
Liz Gilbert, in Big Magic, writes about how an idea will, if we don't grab it, pass on to someone else.
And so, we need to be ready and we need to be courageous.
Because mostly, the things that count will require a leap of faith.
I didn't know what my story would be. At almost no point. But I can see one part of it now. It's the story of this writing practice: sit down for 12 minutes, write, proof read once, post online. Every week. Even if it's at 6:49pm on a Friday night. Every week (except when I'm on holiday).
The truth about life that emerged as I wrote these pieces is, it turns out, although I didn't know that for most of this practice, what I was called to. It was an opportunity. It was an idea waiting for someone, a story to be told. I'm not sure when the story really emerged, but it has become a frame through which I see my successes and my failures.
The truth about life only became 'a truth about life' when, recently, I was writing the introduction to what will be the first in a series of books based on these pieces, written using 'the 12-Minute Method'. It crystalised as something like this:
If you start doing something, even for just 12 minutes each week. And you keep going for a period of years, you will have built something significant. And sometimes, that something will be magical.
That then, becomes the pattern that emerged in my coaching business and with the Wisdom of David Gemmell. It is how I make sure I am still learning Spanish. It is how I think about my podcast: not about what exists now, but about what will exist if I keep making one episode every month for a period of years.
It is a story worth telling, one which can unlock the procrastination and Resistance, which can get us out of our own way and remind us that even if the best time to start something was years ago, the second-best time is now.
But I didn't know it was my story at the start. I didn't set out to tell it. I just kept taking steps. Courageous steps. I kept getting coaching, and because coaching inspires action, and guides us in the way that we want, deep down, to go, it took me to where I was scared. It took me to writing, it took me to experimenting, it took me to an emergent practice which took me, in the end, to creating a series of books. And then, and only then, more than five years since the coaching session with my coach that spawned the Train Series, which became this 12-minute writing practice, did I see the story.
Only now do I see the story. Do I see the insight, the contribution.
It's not a new contribution. But then there isn't really any new wisdom in the world: there's just old wisdom, told with a new person's flavour. (And that last sentence is certainly not my thought - I first heard it from Michael Neill.)
But it is a contribution. A reminder to all of us that we can't know how things will turn out at the start. We can, though, follow our hearts. We can follow our intuitions. Or, if we don't know how to access them, we can follow our fear. We can remember what Steven Pressfield said about Resistance: that the places where we feel the most Resistance are the places that are most important for our soul's evolution.
We can be pretty sure, I think, that if we take no courageous steps, the stories that we might be a part of will pass us by. The opportunities and invitations will slip away.
And we can be pretty sure that if we make things, we will change. If we keep things up, we will change.
It is quite something to realise you have built your own mythology.
And it is quite something to realise that a story has been told by you and through you, by accident.