Life QuestThis week an amazing quest began. Jeffrey Davis and the Tracking Wonder community formed to create #Quest2015 – 12 Days with 12 Visionaries to Imagine Your Best 12 Months. What I can say three days in is “wow!” Tough questions requiring open souls and minds and eventually an answer we can stick with.

I love this quest as it is a solid blend of inspiration and sweat. I am inspired by the questions and the community. I am sweating because it translates into daily work, as all good things in life require. Life dreams just don’t appear one day. They take inspiration, definition, and sweat.

Three days in and the work continues. What I am highlighting here are snapshots into my thoughts on the first two questions and more details on the third. I hope this is helpful in planning your new year and feel free to join in Quest 2015. It is never too late to begin your quest.

What would be the most fun to create this year? @jenlouden

Space.

Space to think.

Space to focus.

Space to become the next best me.

The past few years have cluttered my space. I let it happen.

In what ways might you artfully curate your life in 2015 to occasion serendipity, creativity and awe? @JasonSilva

Serendipity and space go together. Space enables us to kick up the dust of possibility as well as clean out the dust of our self-created ruts. (tweet this)

Plowing a field requires you to place one side of your tractor’s tires in a newly plowed rut. This keeps the fields neat yet farming is anything but neat. Farming is messy, dirty.

An interesting juxtaposition appears between planting the crops in neat rows and the unknown weather that can prosper or destroy carefully planted seeds. There is much unknown, uncontrollable. This never stops a farmer from planting seeds and doing the work. We use space to plant in hope of growth and prosperity in purpose.

So, what will I plant to experience awe?

I will plant seeds of stepping out of my comfort zone to promote my work done.

I will plant the seeds to grow beyond what box I may have been placed in.

I will plant seeds in entrepreneurial ventures and communities to see what I can support and encourage.

I will plant words in sentences, weaving together paragraphs of bolder challenges and practices to become better leaders.

I will plant my feet in new places to explore and discover, seeding my own growth.

Without the courage to plant seeds we will never have an opportunity for growth. What we plant is what we hope to harvest… curate.

I cannot control the storms that may blow in but bountiful growth and achievement never comes from just storm watching. I plan to get my hands dirty and seed a new path forward.

Who are you willing to disappoint or offend or upset or abandon… for the sake of the Great Work that’s calling you for your best 2015? @boxofcrayons

And now the real challenges enter into our space, my space. People enter in. Others have their perceptions, their demands, and their goals to achieve. They invade and disrupt our dreams, our purpose. Just as I let my space get cluttered, we let others define our space.

This question about disappointing or upsetting others really comes down to whether or not we have our quest or dream defined. If we don’t know what our quest is, then we are more likely to be distracted and join in someone else’s journey.

The second part of this question is really the crux moment – “for the sake of Great Work.” What is my “Great Work” calling? If I don’t crystalize this, whatever I do will be disjointed. I need to define my space, my Great Work calling. The seeds I plan to plant are key to doing my Great Work in 2015.

Just as the weather can blow in and disrupt the best laid plans, others stir up dust of massive distractions.

We have responsibilities though. These responsibilities are the core of our storm. We have relationships to keep us centered – our partners, soul mates, family, and close friends. We should not (cannot) abandon the people we are most connected to and the people most connected to us should have a deep understanding of who we are and what we want to be. If not, these relationships need a mountain of work to be done before a quest can really be undertaken.

What I have learned is we can love others but we may not like them at times. The dance of relationships. (tweet this) We may not like the way they are holding us back or doing things to their own lives that take up our own time to address and resolve. And, at times, we may take separate paths with the hopes of rejoining later. Other times, we separate with love and understanding. Never easy.

Work relationships carry the same weight. Mentors, friends, and people who have given us great opportunities can eventually become detours to our Great Work or box us in based on their perceptions of who we are and what we want to pursue. There are no magic words to untangle from people who have supported us most. Just as in life relationships, if mutual respect and empathy are present, parting ways in a supportive way is possible. Possible but not easy.

What this all centers on is simply:

Dream definition is essential.

Doing the work toward my dream needs space to develop.

My dream space needs to be protected and managed through storms.

Relationships are an intersection of space, and I need to ensure the intersections are happy, supportive, and filled with respect and love.

In work and relationships, tough decisions will need to be made with strength of heart and purpose.

A quest is never easy. If it was, everyone would be completely fulfilled and this world would be an even more amazing place to live and prosper within. Messiness always enters. How we work through the messiness will determine how well we achieve our dreams.

I need mettle in my quest. We all do.

What do you want to create in the new year ahead? What will curate, discover to get there? Who will you abandon to achieve your quest? Are you ready?