6
Stepping into the New
“Life expands or contracts in proportion to one's courage.”
Anaïs Nin
We are now approaching the jumping-off point. The time that you make a formal commitment to your Quest and begin down the road. We have identified your heroic profile, found your motive and identified a Quest that really matters to you. We have reviewed what you will need to change or let go of to begin the Quest.
Now we are readying up to cross the threshold. This is the point of no return.
Indiana Jones stands on the edge of a cliff face. He knows that to capture the Holy Grail he is required to take a leap of faith. He looks worried, but heroic. He takes a step out into the thin air. As his foot descends, a bridge appears. He hurtles across the magical bridge and on to the next chapter of his Quest.
Starting out on your Quest can feel like stepping out into thin air. To have the courage to do so, we need to cultivate a Questing Mindset. A Questing Mindset helps us to change our way of thinking so we are more empowered and confident to take risks, like Indy in the example above. By changing our thinking, we begin to have more options for doing things differently. This chapter will give you the practical tools to commit to your Quest with the courage and determination you will need to succeed.
Attitude Makes the Difference
Cheesy motivational posters were big when I was young. They usually had lions or sunsets on them and people punching the sky. They said things like “Attitude makes the difference” and “Believe in yourself.” Apparently they were designed to motivate and inspire the workforce or the student body. There is now a great website dedicated to anti-motivation posters. They include such catchy slogans as “You can't spell failure without U R A” and “What if the purpose of your life is just to serve as a warning for others?” If you feel you need to create a shrine to shirking or just need a way to lighten the tone, you could do worse than check out www.despair.com.
The reason I mention this is that it is important for us to stay playful during our Quests. Yes, they matter. A lot. We may be striving for something that goes way beyond anything we have ever done before. We may be standing for something that will make a difference to many people. But this does not mean we have to go all po-faced about it. Setting big, scary goals for ourselves can be fun. We could look at it as playing the game of life. The bigger the stakes, the more unlikely the odds, the more we can really engage all our faculties. You wouldn't run out to watch a film that had the dramatic movie trailer declaring:
On this day, in 2014, Dave decided on a Quest. He was going to go shopping. In the frozen aisle, he was torn between the Fudge Sundae and the Rocky Road. Where will it end? What will he take home? Find out in Dave Goes to Cashsavers. Out now.
Decide now to play big. Decide that whatever your Quest is, you are going to go all out to achieve it. Decide that you are going to have enormous amounts of fun doing it. It might be hard, exhausting or challenging, but you are going to make darned sure it is also joyful.
Marina Pepper is a great example of this. Counsellor turned activist, she gave up on local politics when she discovered that she could not make a lasting difference through the system concerning the issues that really mattered to her. Now an eco-activism coordinator, she finds ways to make light of serious situations.
Marina is a bright spark. Beautiful, gamine and alternately playful and serious, she has a great way of using theatre and play techniques to engage people in direct action on serious issues. Over a recent cup of coffee she shared some of her play tactics with me. They included: organizing sleepovers as an alternative to blockades, including pyjamas and bedtime stories, and coordinating tea parties, with bunting and biscuits outside magistrates' courts as a way to support protestors who had been wrongfully arrested.
Start Before You Are Ready
When you start your Quest, you are unlikely to know exactly how you are going to get from where you are now to where you want to be. This is where seeing the Quest as a game can really help. Consider that you need to be in it to win it and you only need to think about your next move. A game of chess can turn on an instant. To play well, you need to be able to observe and survey the board and then take the best and most “right” move you can come up with.
If you were to create a games rule book for how you are going to approach your Quest, what would it contain?Break the Rules
“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”
Pablo Picasso
Questing means freedom to break your previous set of rules. Embrace it! Give yourself the freedom to experiment. Stepping over the threshold can be considered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize upon a new way of living.
In his book, A Whack on the Side of The Head, Roger von Oech points out that every innovation and discovery came about because someone broke the rules and tried another approach.
“With his trailing codas and double orchestral fugues, Beethoven broke the rules on how a symphony should be composed. With his equating mass and energy as different forms of the same phenomenon, Einstein broke the rules of Newtonian physics.”
To create a new way of living or thinking, you are going to need to learn to throw away an old one.
Now that you are deciding to go ahead with your Quest, what are you going to give yourself permission to do that you were not allowed to do before?
Be a Beginner
We can employ the idea of the beginners mind to help us get comfortable with entering the unknown. Beginners have wonderful freedom – a license to experiment and to try things out. They can allow themselves not to be any good at all because they are just starting.
Have you ever watched a small child learning to walk? Or maybe you have a little one of your own? It takes considerable struggle and effort to master the art of walking on two feet. Our muscles need to adjust, we need to find and maintain our centre of gravity and get used to being upright. Our brains are working hard to build the neural pathways so that, with enough practice, we can walk without even giving it a second thought. The same is true for the new ways of being we will adopt on our Quest. We are going to need to exercise new muscles, to learn how they work and build up our practice slowly.
When a toddler takes a topple, we don't shout at them and chastise them for trying to take a risk. Instead we recognize and celebrate their success and encourage them to have another go. In no time at all, they are waddling about all over the place, leaving carnage in their wake. We need to find the ways in which we can celebrate our baby steps as we begin, holding back the inner critic to protect these vulnerable new aspects of ourselves and our emerging Questing skill sets.
I remember the first time I tried out a static trapeze. It had always been a dream of mine to wear spangles and go flying above the crowd. I seek out aerial theatre and am always captivated by the beauty and speed of those daring circus performers, graceful and strong and seemingly fearless, as they swing high above my head in the Big Top.
So the first time I had a go, I donned my action-woman leggings, dusted my hands to stop them slipping and placed them on the swinging bar above my head. The teacher told us to gracefully raise both our legs forward off the floor using a little jump for momentum and then lift them over our heads in a “pike” position. I tried that. But my legs were determined not to leave the ground and my arms just shook like jelly. The only part of my body that I could get to go upwards, in defiance of gravity during that session, were my eyes.
But you know, within five weeks, I could not only move into this strange gymnastic position, I could get up on the bar too.
What are you going to be trying for the first time on this Quest?
Think of yourself as that little toddler, making the epic journey from sofa to table. If you allowed yourself to be a beginner, how would you take care of yourself while you are learning?
Stop Believing in Safety
Seth Godin, social media guru, points out that the idea of staying safe is itself a myth. We think if we do nothing, we will never be exposed. “Selling is not safe. You might (in fact you will) be rejected.Golf is not safe. My grandfather died playing golf.”
If you wholeheartedly commit and step out of your place of safety, the worst that can happen is that you learn from your mistakes. If you don't begin, you will never know what could have been.
As an aside, Seth is one of my role models. He doesn't mentor me. I have never met him. I just like his style. Who are your role models? Who are the people who do something a bit like what you would like to do? How can you find out more about them and use them as inspiration for the Quest?
Eliminate Failure as an Option
Until the Quest is done, you have no idea whatsoever about how it is going to turn out. Given that you have no information at all to base this on, you need to keep your mindset focused on the question of “How can I succeed?”
Joss Whedon's TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shows Buffy constantly finding herself battling all manner of demons and bloodsuckers in her Quest to save the world from the dark forces. Whatever challenge she faces, whatever variety of scary monster, she remains confident that, as Armageddon is not an option, she will find a way through, either on her own or with the support of her friends.
When Helen and Simon set up Montezuma's, a family-run luxury chocolate business (www.montezumas.co.uk), they had no idea how it would do. The original plan was only to sell chocolate, but when their manufacturing supplier went bust, they started making the chocolates themselves. Having invested all they had and ignored everyone who said it was a bad idea, they really needed to do whatever they could to make it work. Helen told me that “knowing you could lose everything is a great way to focus the mind and motivate you to do whatever it takes!”
If you knew that failure was not an option on your Quest, what preparations would you make for stepping into the new?
The Courage to Begin
So now we have the mindset in place to really launch our Hero's Journey. Next bit. Hmmm, chew that pencil … how do you actually start?
You do not need to know how you are going to do something before you start. The “how” emerges from clarifying the “what” and the “why” and then repeatedly taking action. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, was absolutely certain that it was possible to use a metal filament to conduct electricity and therefore produce light. He didn't know what metal, at what thickness, but he was absolutely clear about his intention – to create a light that worked. It took several thousand goes to find the right filament, but Thomas's commitment was undimmed (excuse the pun). Edison told himself each time the light did not come on, that he had discovered another way that did not work. Until one day, it did. Stepping into our Questing world requires this level of commitment. If it is not the first or the second or the third solution that works for the result you want, you will just need to keep on coming at it from a different angle.
In order to help you learn to initiate and commit, we are going to look at three tools.
1. Set a Date
Now, not to state the obvious, but a date in the diary does wonders. So give some thought as to when the best time for you to start is and put it in the diary. As no one else will care as much about your Quest as you do, an artificial deadline can help you make a start. Another way to do this is to make an external commitment to someone concerning your Quest. For example, if you are dreaming of going to college, book a place on the open day. The action does not have to be huge, but there does need to be a real and significant activity that takes place to denote the start. Someday, sometime is not a Quest. A Quest is a factual commitment to making something happen. And it has a start date and a tangible action.
2. Start Small
“A legendary hero is usually the founder of something – the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go on a Quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potential of bringing forward that new thing.”
Joseph Campbell
If your Quest is a challenging endeavour, something that has not been done before or one that will involve significant finance, time or energy, you might want to experiment with a trial run before you commit to it fully. In my workshops, we call this a “pilot.” In TV it can prove very costly if a whole series is made that does not capture the interest of viewers. A pilot episode is a one-off, low-budget version of the whole shebang. It tests the concept, the vision and whether the tone of the programme hits the mark with the intended audience. This then gives TV executives a chance to decide on whether to invest a lot more money in the whole series. Before you quit your job and move to Norway to set up an eco tree house resort, plot vengeance on a bullying boss through exposure in the press, join the world's most expensive dating agency or buy an entire suite of woodwind instruments, just consider first of all:
“What is the micro version?”
Save yourself this kind of bother by test-driving your Quest. With my start-up entrepreneurs, I consider it a real success to run a pilot and discover your idea is not viable. Imagine if you had gone ahead – the stress it would have caused. Like Edison, you have just discovered one other way that does not work. This does not mean the end of your Quest, it means you are one step closer to discovering what will work to give you the experience you are looking for.
And if in doubt, keep returning to what you know about who you are and what you are committed to experiencing in your life.
- What are the ways this could be expressed that differ from your first thought?
- What could you do by way of an experiment?
3. Develop New Habits
I want you to do a little exercise for me. Hold your hands out in front of you, with the palms facing each other. Now clasp your hands together, interlinking your fingers like this.
Notice, which thumb is on top? The one on the left or right hand? Now I want you to unclasp your fingers and do the same thing, only put the other thumb on top. So your left is on top, instead of your right, or vice versa.
We all have habitual ways of doing things. If you play football, you will know that there is one foot that just feels more comfortable to kick with. The same is true emotionally – there are some situations in life where we can pretty much predict how we are going to behave or react. Think of how you are with a parent or particular friend. Do you act differently based on that relationship? And if you are stressed or upset, do you tend to do the same sorts of things to comfort yourself? I do. For me, it's hiding away in bed with a movie. Now maybe sometimes, the best thing for me to do would be to go for a walk, or to distract myself by seeing someone fun, but it feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar and the quicker, more habitual, fix is to get back into bed.
But here's the thing. “If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.” Which is fine if your life is totally perfect and you are glowing with health, have great relationships with everyone near and dear to you, value and appreciate yourself, contribute positively to society, have the wittiest and most marvelous friends, speak a range of languages, can reasonably be described as a polymath, have an astonishingly fulfilling job and a clear sense of purpose. If this is you, you may as well put this book down right now.
Still here? Thought so! We all have areas we want to improve, new talents we might like to explore, habits we want to break. Yet sometimes we get a little stuck, because what is familiar feels safe, even if it isn't such a great idea.
Whether it is leaving a job or a marriage, starting a family, changing direction, starting a business, giving up smoking, setting off on a physically demanding adventure, launching a campaign, whatever you dream of, you will need to break some habits and do some unfamiliar things.
If you start with simple habit breaking and get comfortable with this, you can move on to more advanced techniques in due course. Habit breaking is a great way to train yourself to adapt better and more quickly to change.
Do Something Different
You are going to need to make some shifts in your behaviour when you commit to your Quest. We talked in the previous chapter about how to observe and review your environment. As we step into the new, some simple behavioural changes can support you in maintaining your Questing mindset. You will need to find the ways to make time for the Quest sacrosanct and hold yourself accountable.
Positive new habits might take the form of five minutes in the morning, spending time connecting with your Quest. It might be the list of small steps you will take today that you compile over breakfast. You might designate a particular room or desk space in your house as Quest HQ. Perhaps you could download a playlist of inspiring songs and make a commitment to spend five minutes every day dancing to What a Feeling or Don't Stop Me Now or some other energy-inducing positive song! Find a ritual that works for you that will give you the sense of familiarity and support you need to ensure you regularly connect with your Quest.
To write this book I created a ritual of getting up at six in the morning to write for three hours every day. I would turn up, whether I fancied it or not. If I avoided this ritual, I found I started coming up with all sorts of excuses, reasons and avoidance techniques. These included watching TV programmes I wasn't interested in, eating when I wasn't hungry and reading the newspaper cover to cover. Nothing wrong with them in themselves, but I didn't even enjoy those things because, in the back of my mind, I KNEW what it was that I needed and wanted to be doing. The more I resisted it, the more uncomfortable my life became. Your precious energy is being frittered away on worrying about not doing what you should be doing.
- What are your non-negotiable rituals?
- What can you commit to, even if you do not feel like it?
When Commitment Is Forced Upon You
When life “happens” to us, the only choice we are left with is how we respond to it. Once we have begun to move through shock or denial, our head begins to look forward to the future and we may find comfort and focus through our commitment to a Quest.
Remi Olajoyegbe is an entrepreneur, a coach and the co-founder of Six Dinners Later, a face-to-face social network that enables members to make new friends through hosting and attending dinner parties in each other's homes. Remi had been very successful in the financial markets for several years before a painful loss catalyzed her decision to change her life completely. “I already knew that what I was doing was no longer fulfilling me. But when my daughter was still-born very late on in my pregnancy, that was a key decision point. It was deeply traumatic, but I can honestly say that she changed my life and she really highlighted my need to nurture. I felt I needed to channel her loss in a positive way. Shortly after she died I changed direction completely, retrained as a coach and began the entrepreneurial endeavours I had long thought about but not actioned.”
If your Quest has been catalyzed by some kind of tragedy or shock, what can you do to transform this energy into positive action?
Taking Your Vow
In 2012, I was fortunate enough to become a Winston Churchill Travel Scholar (www.wcmt.org.uk). This bequest lets any UK citizen apply for a bursary to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to examine an area of passion or interest and bring back what they have learned to the UK. The key question for the participants is: how will you share what you have learned in a way that benefits UK life? It is not enough to have the experience of the trip – the experience is validated by sharing it with others. This book is part of my giving back what I was so graciously given by the Trust (my area of interest was transformational education).
A vow is a promise we make like the question asked by the Churchill Trust. It sets out what we will do in the way of dedicated service to the world in exchange for support on our Quest. We need to find a way to give of ourselves in order to achieve something that matters to us. You may have done this at times in your life where it felt necessary to strike a bargain – “If you help me with this I will …”. Mythology abounds concerning the dark side of this pact – where characters call on dark forces to help them achieve their goals. If we are to stay in the light, the strength we need to call on must be clear, positive and sacred.
“I decided that everyone had their own personal God and that however much faith you placed in your own God, determined how successful you could become. I made an agreement then, with my own personal God, that if he would keep the wolf from my door, if he could allow me to be a professional musician, then I would, for the remainder of my days, use my music to touch other people and to sing his praises.”
Maxi Jazz, on his commitment to share the principles of Buddhism through the platform of being a successful musician
Whether you draw strength from a spiritual belief or consider yourself profoundly rational, you may wish to take your own Vow. It could be one of loyalty or commitment to yourself and your mission. Or it could be a promise about what you will bring back to your friends, family or community on your return.
For those of us who do have a spiritual foundation, or who might like to develop one, we can use prayer and silent, quiet time to make our Vow.
- How would you articulate your Vow? What gift are you willing to share with the world as a result of your Quest?
- What might you be willing to sacrifice, surrender or give up in order to have the outcomes you are looking for?
Close to the Edge
“Icarus was warned to fly the middle path, not to fly too close to the sun or the water. When you are doing something that is a brand new adventure, there is always the danger of too much enthusiasm and emotion. We have to learn to keep our mind in control and not let it pull you compulsively toward disaster.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Whatever your Quest, there may be preparations to be made before the jumping-off point. I may be asking you to jump out of a plane, but not without a parachute. Sometimes these preparations take time and effort to put into place. We become impatient to get started, tired by the seemingly endless list of components, or qualifying tests or different plates we need to spin.
If you are going to begin an endeavour that will be costly, or will mean you are unlikely to be earning money for a period of time, this will need to be managed. Yes, heroes do often have real luck and serendipity, but you need to both “trust in God and tether your camel.” If you are returning to study, setting up a new business, taking time out for a physical adventure or becoming a parent, you are going to need to consider how material needs will be met. This may mean a delay in beginning the Quest, or a rethink of the format of your Quest to allow for some part-time work or the acquisition of savings. It could also be achieved by cutting down your expenses and living more simply.
Financial and security worries can reduce the level of energy we have to focus on the Quest ahead of us. We rarely do our best work in these conditions.
Every Quest involves some level of sacrifice.
- What are you willing to give up to begin your Quest?
- What have you put in place to support you financially?
- What adjustments might you need to make to your life to accommodate your Quest?
Just Do It
The good news is that all evidence points to the release of a lot of positive and energizing effects that result from committing to and beginning a Quest. The montage scene from every classic hero story, where the hero gets fit, gathers weapons, finds mentors, seeks knowledge, falls in love … all those experiences mirror what happens when we commit to a life plan that means something to us.
You might like to see this jumping-off point as the entry point into a more magical and alive way of living where we have to rely on intuition, collaboration and resilience to see us through. Though Quests are, by their nature, demanding, this is usually a really exciting time. So be sure to enjoy it.
The Jumping-Off Point
The Universe rewards action. Our heroes, real and imagined, take action on their dreams. They learn through doing. There is a limit to the amount of academic or theoretical research that we can do on a subject. At some point, we are going to need to start. And when we do, we will learn a huge amount from our research in action.
Quests Activate Superpowers
My friend Caroline came to visit me a couple of years ago covered from head to toe in nettle stings and bramble cuts. Just looking at her skin brought tears to my eyes. She had taken her sister's skittish racing horse for a ride and the horse had reared up, thrown her off and bolted. She had fallen hard, onto her back and into a quagmire of nasty plants. But as she fell, her first thought was “I need to catch that bloody horse.” The adrenalin kicked in and it was not until the horse was safely recaptured that Caroline registered how hurt she was.
So it is. We are going to need to shoot out of the nettles and long grass and leap over the fence. We are going to need to take the step we do not want to take. We are going to have to let go of what happened moments ago, months ago or years ago, to be present with what is, right now. We are going to run for our lives.
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
And they flew.
Christopher Logue, “Come to the Edge”, New Numbers.
Reproduced with permission of the state of Christopher Logue © Christopher Logue, 1969
Chapter Summary- To step into the new we will need to be willing to break the rules.
- We can take both solemnity and play into the spirit of our Quest.
- If we start small and practical, pilot our ideas and do our research, we can make it easier to begin.
- We can build habits that support who we want to become.
- Take ownership and manage the practicalities.
- Commitment starts with action – at some point we have to be willing to jump.