You’ll try following the map until you realise it’s a compass you need.
Most of us look for a map to follow. I suspect we have all been guilty of wanting to see the path laid out before us, with no hidden bends or unfinished roads.
But as it is with real-world expeditions, you need to go off road.
No great learning or solution can be laid out step-by-step-by-step. The Thousand Doors is the truth that your real future lies hidden, out of sight, and requires you to Open Doors.
There is no fool-proof process, no journey free from obstacles. If you’re being creative and daring, there are very few relevant best practices.
Nothing worthwhile is straightforward.
Stop looking for the map and realise instead that what you need is a compass.
When setting out to make a discovery, take with you a map. But true adventurers only use the map as a vague reference point. Their real tool is the compass.
Funnily enough, the compass is a simpler concept than the map, with its mad array of lines and criss-crosses, colour-coding and contours. But the compass does a crucial thing. It points north.
Have you found True North in your life?
When following the compass, you are not given a ‘way’. You are, however, given the only thing that matters, which is a direction.
When you’re following the map, you might zig-zag inefficiently because you have resigned yourself to follow the lines laid out by others. That does not mean it were the best or only way.
Once you know the direction, you figure out the best route. The most direct route.
There will be the occasional mountain, the odd obstacle to overcome. You will never correctly predict every obstacle on the road. If you could, it would mean you’re not being daring enough.
Concern yourself only with the obstacles that are on your path. Don’t mount unnecessary mountains, or wade through directionless valleys.
Our education system will send you down wild, winding traffic-laden detours all for naught, all because someone else wrote that map, and told us we had to follow it. These are not necessary evils — but most of us perceive them to be.
Concern yourself not with these paths if they do not face True North.
Look not for a process, a linear way, a path to trod. But if a path leads straight to your True North, then why not take it?
North is determined by a magnetic field. This is a polarising force that governs our entire spatial existence. Few of us understand it very well, yet it exists. It is what sets True North, not you.
It is your role to find and follow it.
Oh and the things you shall find.
