This 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?
Thank you for sharing this quest, a few questions to get us thinking and your honest answers. I feel you 🙂 Space. Yes. The one question I needed the most in this moment was actually number 3. I’ve often asked as a coaching question: How far are you willing to go in service of your clients… To turn the tables it’s important to ask how much I’m wiling to release and let go in service of new found possibilities, paths and success. I know it asks who… but I’m modifying for what…
I love Jeffrey’s work and this is yet another reason why.
Thanks, Jon!
~ Alli
Good way to turn the table, Alli! Doing this and creating space to do what matters most is tough but essential to do. Looking forward to the continued questions as part of #Quest2015. Jeffrey does great work and have gained a lot from working with him the past year. Thank you! Jon
Wow Jon! This Quest2015 sounds like and an incredible journey. What a great way to begin our search and goal setting for the coming year. I look forward to hearing more from you and what you discover along the way.
For me, I am trying to re-evaluate how I want to spend my time in my business. I love the idea of planting my seeds. I am going to think about what I really need and want to plant.
Thanks for sharing! Terri
Thank you, Terri. Good questions prompt better thinking and am grateful for the Quest2015 team. Getting ready for the new year ahead, and it sounds like your too. Thanks! Jon
Well this certainly answers my question I just asked you in a tweet earlier today Jon! : )
‘What’s #quest2015?’
First, I just watched the 2 minute Quest video on Jeff’s website, then signed up. Looking forward to the journey and discovery!
Second, it sounds like you are well on your way to learning, cultivating, and transforming a whole new way of relating and being in the midst of your own life and business journey. Sounds exciting and challenging all at the same time!
I love your analogy of plowing a field as it resonates to the name of the very first blog and website I created after my husband died: Sow Your Destiny. It was based on a popular quote >> ‘sow a thought, reap an act, sow an act, reap a habit, sow a habit, reap a destiny.’
However, my initial vision was enmeshed with the grieving process after my husband died, so I was doing quite a bit of writing surrounding his loss, etc.
I also encountered some other obstacles to my vision that you touch on in your own account of plowing the field. It has to do with two important factors >> there’s what WE bring to any endeavor …in terms of what WE can control. i.e. the seeds we sow into our respective fields and environments, the labor we put into it, the tender love and care of watering, feeding, trimming, and nurturing growth. Then there are those elements that are completely outside of our control. i.e. inclement weather, crop disease, insects/pests that can destroy what we are trying to plant and grow.
And the ‘conflict’ between the two has been my biggest challenge for the past few years! : ) When something blows up in my face or winds up being destroyed, the call is to pick ourselves back up and plow and plant again. Keep creating. My challenge and task is to find the energy, courage, and resource to be able to do it ‘one more time’ when we feel we’ve hit bottom and there’s nothing left.
I love your quote here:
‘I will plant the seeds to grow beyond what box I may have been placed in.’
The next Quest question is a powerful one and perhaps the most challenging for many of us. ‘Who are we willing to disappoint?’ It reminds me of a piece written by Oriah Mountain Dreamer called ‘The Invitation’
http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/
Here’s a paragraph from it:
‘It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.’
Are we willing to disappoint another in order to be true to ourselves, our story, our journey, our life?
And we must.
And this is hard to do because on the one hand, we KNOW that we CAN’T succeed on our own. We CAN’T do much of anything apart from cooperation and support with others along our journey and path. So we want to be open to people that enter into our paths and be able to let go of the ones that may not be ‘right’ for our particular quest.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is in learning to recognize it when it’s time to let people ‘pass on through’ and do this in love?
We get tripped up on this point I think. At least I do.
I remember our brief series of emails not too long ago sort of touched on this. When we briefly explored what we could help each other with at this point. I said something along the lines of at this point in time, I couldn’t think of anything specific or concrete and so we remain fluid and ‘open’ to opportunity down the road if and when it arises.
And so when people come and go in our lives, if we can find a way to do this consciously and in love (ever evolving and growing), perhaps we can learn to do this without so much suffering and loss. Perhaps we can learn to appreciate these comings and goings of people that may walk with us for a season or for a time and then let one another go on our way until we meet up again down the road…
In some cases, we won’t. Maybe it was just a one time ‘gig’. Other people we will meet up with again. Still others will remain in our lives for the long haul! : )
This post totally resonates Jon. Thanks for sharing it.
So many good points, Samantha, but two I will highlight. The first is the conflict between what we can control and what we cannot. Knowing the difference makes a big difference, and we can never stop planting seeds because of some fear in what may happen. To grow, we need to do our work and then be ready to adapt when uncontrollables arise.
The second is on the seasons of various relationships. There are people who are with us through most of the seasons of our lives. And then there are those who appear at certain times and deliver a lot of value and support. But then they take a different path, or we take a different path.And all is OK with this. Life happens. Crossroads happen.
None of this is easy, just as farming isn’t easy. Yet we do our best and do our work to make a difference.
Grateful,
Jon