What’s your comfort level?
I have a friend who is a CPA.
You know - a certified public accountant.
She handles high-level financial systems and tax reports
for businesses and people with complicated assets and property
where tax law comes into play.
That's not me.
A few years ago, "Claire" (not her real name)
was horrified at the prospect of my taking a financial risk.
She was not only horrified, she said she was
scared just hearing about it.
“I could never do something like that,” she said.
Claire is successful - possibly wealthy.
She’s familiar with risk, so she wasn’t concerned
about losing money.
The risk for her was going into a financial system
she knew nothing about.
For Claire, years of education and experience
managing money for others became a skill.
Being skilled in that way gives her a background
of expertise, one that makes others feel secure.
Her nimble handling by financial principles
and the way she fluently speaks financial language
says she has cultural knowledge
as a citizen of the financial world.
The difference between my comfort level
and Claire’s comfort level
is not about money.
It’s a difference in peace of mind.
We all want to be happy when we work.
I assume Claire loves her work.
I love my work.
Money is helpful but rarely satisfies the heart.
Our natural inclination is to be happy in work.
At the end of the last blog, Clashes of Titans,
I describe you by your birth month,
using twelve principles of the 12 Phases™,
month by month.
I felt the risk in doing that.
Like Claire, I have years of education and experience
but my skill grew out of creating systems
that did not previously exist,
of trying to introduce new products and ideas.
My history is as unconventional as Claire’s is mainstream.
Where she learned to manage money,
I learned to design tools for adapting,
especially as technology changed business culture.
I am comfortable stepping into the unknown –
where the environment is fertile, that is.
Claire had no reason to fear the unknown
and - strange to say -
I have no reason to fear the known.
Our fear and discomfort come from ignorance:
being unaware of our inborn resourcefulness.
People as Plants
I compare inborn resourcefulness
to the way a plant lives and grows without a mind.
It doesn’t choose what to wear, what to learn,
how to change circumstances…
A plant has no angst about love.
Plants just are.
Believe it or not - at your core,
you just are.
This is an abstract concept
that requires you to set aside all things visible
and imagine how a plant lives and grows.
You and I live and grow in the same way -
naturally - apart from our intentions.
You are living naturally - without effort –
in the same way a plant lives.
Begin with the fact that you simply exist,
like the tree outside.
And like you, that tree began years ago,
before the day you saw it.
Like other trees, it grew from a seed
that changed to a sprout
to become a sapling,
getting bigger, thicker, branchier, and leafier...
Each phase was a transformation.
A baby is a "seed" of what a person will become,
one like no other.
What you were as a child
is not how you are as an adult.
You are being transformed –
day by day, cell by cell -
just like a tree is transformed
day by day, from root to fruit.
Even as you are transformed physically,
you are transformed inwardly
by the force of life inside,
also like a plant.
We mature just like an apple tree:
A seed looks nothing like a sapling,
which barely resembles a 30-foot tree with branches,
which looks nothing like the apple.
Among apple trees, one tree is
slightly different from the others.
Among people, you are slightly different from others.
Those slight differences make you distinct among others.
Discover
Imagine you are an astronaut sent out to find alien life.
You land on a planet that is flourishing with life
but there are no two objects alike.
No two plants are alike on this planet.
One day you see a new form
coming up out of the ground.
Intrigued, you set up camp nearby
to watch its progress.
With each growth phase, some new feature unfolds.
Imagine the fascination of discovery.
You have no prior concept,
no expectation of what will come next.
You watch and learn what this new thing is becoming.
Imagine yourself in this kind of growth process,
becoming someone that has never existed before
and never will again.
Someone absolutely one of a kind.
What can be observed is one thing.
The power that is life is entirely something else.
Plants - and we - take life for granted.
When we have what we need,
there's no thought about how or why.
We - and plants - simply are, and life supplies the rest.
This is what peace of mind is -
accepting the way Life works on you -
you being you, in the way of your DNA.
The 12 Phases™ was given to me
because – according to my nature – I had to have it.
I had lost the ability to work happily.
Life gave me exactly what I needed.
From the ashes rose the phoenix.
Time and Life work in your favor.
You already know this.
The mystery is in the 12 Phases™.
All I did was describe the sequence
as I saw it.