Pause Building: Start Navigating

We spend a lot of time building. Even our language puts a premium on building something new: building a life, building a family, building a home, building a career or a company. We build systems and structures, routines and rituals to support ourselves in those endeavors. We build trust and relationships to help glue it all together.

But what good is all this building if we don’t know how to navigate it? What’s the use of the infrastructure if we’re not oriented or equipped to move through it? It’s like building a series of beautiful waterways but missing the boats and captains.

The work I do is focused on how we operate our own internal GPS to navigate our lives and the world around us. We decipher along the way when it’s appropriate to take the scenic route over the quickest route, how to reroute when an unexpected hazard comes up ahead, and when to seek alternative options (or not) when we see a traffic jam beginning to form in our path.

Where else might we be placing a stronger emphasis on building where navigation skills would be more handy? Sure, the storyboard exists because you’ve built it, but the character of you only becomes animated when you start exploring the map. The more we engage with the territory, the more familiar we grow with our inner compass and the easier it becomes to move about the landscape of our lives.