Some years ago, I was invited by my publishers to be the “opening act” for Dr. Wayne Dyer at a couple of talks he was giving in Dublin and London. I was particularly excited about the second talk, as I would be speaking in front of thousands of people in Wembley Arena and it felt like “making the big time”.
When I phoned my mother to brag about her successful son who was opening for Wayne Dyer at Wembley Arena, she got very excited.
“That’s fantastic!” she exclaimed. “Who’s Wayne Dyer?”
My enthusiasm unabated, I said, “Mom, it’s like if I was a rock band and I’d been asked to open for the Rolling Stones!”
“Wow!” she exclaimed. “Who are the Rolling Stones?”
While that was pretty much the last time I tried to impress my mother, my sense of glee at being allowed to sit at the grown up table of life has continued unabated. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some extraordinary people and have a number of experiences it wouldn’t have occurred to me to put on a goal list because they seemed so far out of my league.
In fact, it seems to me that the coolest things that have happened in my life came about when I wasn’t chasing goals or making plans, but simply following my inspiration and available to opportunity.
Which leads to an interesting question:
If a “cool” life is less about goals and plans than inspiration and happy accidents, is there anything that makes us more inspired and more accident prone?
For me, the best answer to that question I’ve found so far is to spend more time in the unknown. What exactly the unknown is can seem a bit of a mystery, until you realize that the unknown is mystery. It’s the place of pure potential out of which thoughts arise and back into which they fall. I call it “the space where miracles happen”, and the less we have on our mind, the more grounded in it we seem to be.
On this weekend’s Supercoach Masterclass, Dr. Bill Pettit shared an analogy for the power of hanging out in the unknown by drawing a tiny dot on a blank flipchart. “Imagine that dot is my intellect”, Dr. Pettit began. “Everything else on the page is the unknown – the mind of God. Where do you think I looked for answers and inspiration for the first 41 years of my life?” He then went on to point out that he felt the size of the dot was grossly exaggerated and the spaciousness and creative potential of Mind was vastly underrepresented.
For myself, I find that the less inclined I am to try to figure out what to do with my life, the more I enjoy the life I already have. And when I’m hanging out in the unknown, following my inspiration and stepping into opportunities as they arise, it’s a pretty cool life to enjoy…
Have fun, learn heaps, and happy exploring!
With all my love, |