3. DIRECTION

Finally, you probably want to keep investing your time in a rewarding way, feeling ok with your choices, including what you choose to leave behind and let go. A good system will make it easy to chose and keep a good direction, both at a micro and macro levels. It will enable you to conclude, from multiple possibilities, which is the path that is most aligned with what you value most, your inner heuristics, your beliefs, and help you keep on track.

A good system guides you. It will keep in front of you only the finest selection of the very best choices. It will avoid you assessing books you don't really need or want to see right now, because you know you won't be able to do anything about them in a near future. It will reduce dramatically the number of options in front of you, getting you to focus on the right stuff, being sure that all the rest in properly taken care of. Sometimes that means a proactive choice of accepting the risk of losing something in order to accomplish something more important.

A good system will get you to know/define/recall success criteria of everything you are doing. It will prevent you from falling into perfectionism, as well as into the trap of not-choosing instead of choosing not-to.

It will make it easier to recall strategic orientation and set the path even in the middle of the most challenging circumstances, highlighting strong priorities in the middle of total chaos. As well as providing for happiness orientation in the middle of boredom times.

It will both guide you to keep your commitments (for example in terms of calendar and deadlines), as well as enable you to enjoy the pure freedom of deciding on the spot that it's time for a movie at a near theatre, or a massage. It will activate the willingness to follow a creative thought of surprising your mother with some flowers. And maybe it will even make it easier for you to find out that, even if your big master plan for life demands that you discipline yourself and focus your effort on accomplishing the next big step of your life, you can just make a huge shortcut when you offer those flowers, for no special reason other than following a most important inner value of love and contribution. And maybe no bank account or professional achievement will really provide for something like that, in such a straightforward direct simple way, wouldn't you agree?

This final vector - direction - is the deepest one. It's about the messy job of untying all the knots. It's aligning. It's questioning the why's in such a powerful way that, in the end, your path becomes a crystal clear walk in the park, and you just have to enjoy the ride. Your job, your tasks, your very own existence become justified and bring along a sense of inner positive surrender, full of awareness and intensity. It's like a warm sun enhancing it all. Every detail starts making more sense, and you no longer have to wait until you arrive at a certain point or achieve a certain goal, to finally start allowing yourself to feel a certain way. It's finding out you are already there... here!

Of course, no matter how amazing your system is, you will go off track every now and then. But knowing there's a place where you come back to rethink some values and set new coordinates, according to your new reality, that's what's valuable. It's your safe net. Always available. Magical...

What answers does Mr.Direction need to provide?
"Can you please tell me what to do next? What am I doing this for? What's the value behind? Is my calendar trustworthy? Is this the best investment of my time at the moment? What am I trying to accomplish by moving in this direction? What is the really important value that is making me do this? Does this contribute to my deepest feelings of fulfillment? What is it that I really want in the first place? What would success look like in this project? What would it take for me to consider this day a good day? And a good life?"


Now ask yourself:
- is my system being able to provide me with this alignment towards what I want in a satisfactory way?
- does it answer the questions I've just mentioned?
- what else needs to be in place for that to happen even better?