This week’s question comes from Karen Armstrong, Interpersonal Communications Specialist, www.in-side-out.com
QUESTION: In your experience – what is the best way to balance creating a specific business plan and keeping open to respond to the synchronicity that shows up in life? I appreciate the old saying of Create Your Plan then Work Your Plan, however part of me resists planning with too much detail as I find that life provides opportunities that I would never have dreamed of on my own. As we enter the beginning of a new year – I would love to hear your input on this Tal.
TAL’S GUIDANCE: I am a big “in the moment” intuitive-creative person so I really hear you on this one Karen. When I decided to create my own “purpose-full” business, I did alot of experimenting with planning versus surrendering to my in-the-moment flow. What I found is that they did not contradict each other but rather complemented each other exceptionally well. In fact, I found that the more I planned (and yep, for this I developed an intuitive planning system that honors the “flowing” part of my nature.) and “worked my plan”, the more synchronicities I experienced in both my business and life.
You see, it is a universal or spiritual truth that guidance and support is all around us at all times. That said, synchronicity is guidance that is meaningful to us. Even the most potent guidance in the world is of no use to us if we have no way of making it meaningful to our business and life. In other words, there are two parts to a synchronous event: (1) the guidance and (2) us.
Now, if our mindset or consciousness is not able to connect the dots or extract meaning from whatever “high-value” experiences enter our life, then we will not get to enjoy the gift inherent in this synchronicity. In fact, these moments will never even enter our ‘radar’ or awareness as a synchronous event.
In this light, a “workable” plan that we consistently put into motion, creates a vessel or container that has the capacity to ‘focus’, ‘ground’ or ‘gather’ the specific guidance we seek, and channel it in the direction we are intending. In other words, when we have a clear vision and/or a plan, we are more likely to make meaning and ‘connect the dots’ between the events that show up in our life, and how they illuminate, affect or inform our current predicament.
In the past, I used to heed most every synchronicity that showed up in my life (and because I am highly aware of synchronous events… they tend to show up ALOT!) and what that did was continue to feed my natural tendency to run off on a tangent with the next great idea or creative whim, even if it did not nurture my ‘bigger picture’ or plan.
It took me a few years (And Yep! I took the long route.) to realize that this more often than not left me with a plethora of unfinished projects that did not enjoy the “light of day”.
That is when I began to identify and implement very specific criteria (a masculine process) for my business that helped me to gage whether:
(1) to take action on the synchronicity?
(2) if so, how immediately to take that action?
This allows me to honor the synchronous event and possibly heed its’ call within a more structured set of parameters. This practice has proven to be highly effective in terms of nurturing my current projects to fruition! I can’t tell you how effective this has been in terms of the financial, emotional and spiritual ROI (return on investment).
That said, our business and life are continually inviting us to balance both our yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) aspects, and to harness the linear, more structured parts of our consciousness and business to gracefully support and enhance the creative, intuitive and cyclical parts of our being.
They move together like a delicate dance. And like any dance, the core moves lay the foundation for those more subtle nuances that emanate from the depths of our soul. When my ‘masculine’ structures support my ‘feminine’ flow, I palpably feeeeeel this harmony in my business and life. And, when my ‘masculine’ mistakenly steps on the ‘feminine’ toes of my flow (or vice versa), I heed this feedback as a call back to balance and a deeper attunement to the core needs of my business and life.
Karen, I hope this paints a clear picture of how I tend to this continual call for balance.
I honor YOUR path!
From my heart to yours,
