About 3 years ago I drew this illustration on my whiteboard. I was urging myself and a few clients to take meaningful action in a single direction. We can all be tempted to take a few steps in this direction, then a few in that direction, then a few in yet a different direction. All that movement is often confused with action. I’ve written about that kind of stuff before.
Awareness is hard work. It’s not merely opening your eyes or paying attention. We have to have our mind tuned to see things we might otherwise overlook. It’s a state of mind that can often demand preparation before we can see things clearly. We bring our biases and assumptions to everything. They don’t always serve us well.
Ingenuity isn’t genius. It is creativity, but that doesn’t mean it’s some super-extraordinary skill exclusively for world-class thinkers. You can do it. We can all do it. Just like awareness, it requires us to tend the soil of our mind before we can accomplish it. Awareness and ingenuity are tied together though so we can get our mind right to embrace both. They can feed one another.
There’s a really important fact that you may not have noticed. Or did you?
Taking action is 75% of this entire chart.
Seventy-five percent!
It’s a bit misleading though because awareness and ingenuity are ever present during the process of taking an idea from start to profit. Along the way, we have to make choices. We have to clearly be able to evaluate feedback. Action and reaction are sparked by thoughts. Thoughts are fueled by accurate perceptions and the ability to discern what we think is our best course of action.
Does this help you? I hope so. I often have to re-examine this chart and remind myself of the foundational elements of figuring things out.
