Part 2: From Doing-Time into Living Your Higher Vision.
This is the second of this 2-part series of articles.
Reorganizing and transitioning into the life you want to live is an adventure. It entails fully inspiring your vision, motivation, and plan, as well as the willingness to employ your capabilities for re-learning along the way.
You can continue maintaining and protecting your current situation, CS. Or you can generate the transition for the minor or major changes into your desired situation, DS. There are challenges and work either way.
Have you noticed, when what you are doing is a labor-of-love, how the process and rewards are remarkably different.
Last week in Part 1, we began this process by considering 4 core questions about: your CS, your DS, the potential value of your DS, and the risk if nothing changes?
Let's further consider these core questions, and the key factors in actually creating your DS, one step at a time.
This process entails lots of questions. Be alert to when they speak with you. Take time to creatively and patiently explore: How can this be true? How can this be not true?
While maintaining the life of your CS, how will you create the space, structure and support for unleashing the life inside you that is ready to emerge in front of you.
Where are you in the relationship to your CS and DS? Sense what is really important to you, beyond the should’s and can’t's. It may have taken decades to progress to where you are now. Balance being patient with a schedule that leads to having insights and making decisions
Talk with people you trust as a sounding board. Follow the trail that informs your interests and concerns. You may find this requires a major shift in mindset.
Developing clarity about the factors in your CS and DS offers guide-points for your compass and roadmap.
Do circumstances require you hang-in there for a bit longer? If so, how can you improve it, as well as incorporate some of the DS into your CS?
What are you realizing about your current situation? Are there meaningful aspects you enjoy and need to continue, or just want to? But do you also want something more. So are you looking at continuing your current situation in some way, while incorporating some aspects of your DS in a parallel activity, personal or business.
Or is it time to leave your current situation? Circumstances may be that It may no longer interests you in the same way or producing the same results. Has it gotten to the point where it is crushing your spirit? If yes to any of this, what if anything can restrict you from moving forward into your DS? And what can light you on fire to intelligently create an exit and transition plan into what you would rather be doing?
What have you been realizing about your DS? How much of it is already part of your CS? How much of it has been missing? How could developing it make a difference? What would change if you took the steps to transition it into your life? Linger with this. How could this change the experience of your life and those you care about?
As you are being inside your insights to these questions, and feeling the potential value of your DS, what happens if you don’t do anything about any of this, and nothing changes?
What then continues or intensifies about your CS. Specifically, how will this continue to impact you? Drilling deeply into this question is an essential step. I recommend doing this several times with a trusted friend or professional coach. This becomes necessary to uncover the factors that would actually be effected, and the real impact on you. It offers the necessary insight and inspiration for proceeding through the early steps of this process for changing your life.
Realizing the gut level effects of not changing anything about your CS enhances the motivation to start and stay the course through the initial uncertainty and challenges you will be facing.
Crossing the bridge from your CS to your DS ought to be a piece-of-cake. It involves moving in the direction of where you want to go. However it involves changing from what is familiar to what you haven’t done yet. So having a recipe or roadmap wherein the process is simple and clear makes a difference.
Progressing across the bridge from the seeming certainties of your CS to the uncertainties of your DS creates challenges. The discomfort of the risk and confusion needs to be faced and navigated, both for you and for the people involved, personal and business.
In what ways does timing seem a factor? Have you been wanting to change into your DS but have been putting it off because of this or that? So your someday never arrives.
If your inner voice, the voice of your heart, has been encouraging you to do something, then what is stopping you from beginning or continuing to explore it? This is not time to get fixed on reasons to ignore it.
No doubt your day-week is over full. As yet you may carry mixed feelings about moving forward. So the next step involves research and gathering relevant information. This positions you to test the waters in practical, minimal cost ways, for gaining hands on experience in areas of interest.
Martin Luther King reminds us: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just the next step.” I like this quote and it often requires trust.
How have you pursued the dreams of others? Pursuing your own dreams will be different. It involves a re-learning process. It’s like learning to ride a different model of bike. You simply need to get on it and learn as you go. Structure and support helps get it going and then it becomes natural.
Crossing the bridge is a discovery and follow up process. Not being fixed on the discoveries being a certain way helps see more clearly what is actually there. Again trusting the process also helps with the flow, especially through any stutter steps.
Looking at last week’s calendar, what percentage of your time was aligned with what you deeply care about?
So what do you need to do to consistently create the time and capacity for this? Schedule it in your calendar, for example, on Thursday mornings at breakfast and Sunday evenings after dinner? Then do it!
When you begin to have a fairly clear idea about what your DS is calling you to do - the what, it’s then time to begin looking for ways to do it - the how.
What are the key factors of both your CS and DS that require research and information? How can you test the waters and continue testing them until you have the information you need?
What does the research tell you? Who can you talk with that is already doing what you are wanting to create. How many of these people can you talk with for receiving different perspectives? Who in your inner circle can be an effective sounding board as you process what you are learning through the research?
As you progress along the bridge of transition, continue to listen to your inner voice. When challenges surface, how can you penetrate the uncertainties with the support of trusted others, along with due diligence for evaluating data and strategies that can provide solutions?
Over time, your discovery developments will shape what you want to do, and how you can do it.?
For example: What have you achieved in your CS? What is left undone? What do you still care about (or not)? How can you influence its development, directly or indirectly? What do you need to let go?
Do you want to continue what you are doing but to a lesser extent. So does your plan includes downsizing some of your current activity for creating time to develop another area of parallel interest.
Do you know your DS and want to transition into it? But circumstances require you hang in there just a bit longer until something key changes. So how can you improve the CS while preparing what you can for your DS.
Is it time to simply complete the current chapter of what you are doing and create something that may be related but new?
What is your financial position. It may be better than you realized after clarifying the necessary ongoing, as well as the transition, expenses. What is your capacity to fund the early stages of the transition into your DS? How can your research create opportunity for adjusting, as needed, the expenses and income of your budget for moving forward.
The scope of possibilities will be guided by what is really important to you and the realizations through the discovery developments. Be ready for unanticipated opportunities.
It is never too late to go for it. I was into my sixties when I realized I could to step into my DS of living in the unspoiled nature of Brazil, while continuing my life/executive coaching services with clients in the US.
The transition has had its share of challenges and in some ways is still in process. Yet there’s an aliveness about it and I’ve enjoyed more support than I thought was possible.
I’ve also expanded my work with community leaders via mastermind groups and 1-1 sessions. I've been wanting to do this for years and it now puts a shine on my day.
I’m doing what I love and appreciate the ways it brightens my personal and business relationships. While not my focus, my finances and resources are actually more robust than ever.
The above photo, and most of the article’s photos, are where I live or often visit.
How are these 2 articles inspiring you to realize and transition into your DS?1) How are/will you create the space and time to sense what is really important to you?
2) Who do you trust as an effective sounding board?
3) Where are you now in relation to your CS and DS?
4) What is the heart of your DS that lights you on fire?
5) Who is your support system?
6) What is the next step in moving forward through the adventure that is calling you?
NEXT WEEK’S ARTICLE: Facing Difficult - even - Impossible Situations.
otan@otanpatrickford.com 1.973.229.7174 https://www.otanpatrickford.com
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Unwavering Heart: 5 Keys to Living with Fierce Authenticity, 2014
Unwavering Heart: 5 Keys to Becoming your Destiny, 2017