“What if” towards “What is”

I spend a lot of time thinking about “what if”, exploring the situation and preparing for what may be. Then after the fact I try to understand the “why?” Professionally it’s a significant part of being a project manager. Risk identification, risk management and lessons learned are a huge part of my professional life.

Away from work it’s also something I do. I have the same look at the “what if”, and there have been a couple of moments in the last year where what I thought of as the worst-case scenario came true.

Part of my recent journey has been moving through the “what if” to be closer to he “what is”.

I’m not going into details here, the short version of events meant that I was caught in what really was a worst case scenario that I was told would never happen. It changed a couple of relationships, probably for good, and I’m still recovering on a personal level from the incident. The fundamentals of who I am were questioned, and that was really hard.

This questioning carried over into the rest of my life, in part because I allowed it to do so.

Part of going forward for me involves going back to past incidents and wanting to understand the why, especially if it all went a little pear shaped. I’d like to understand why so I can recognize the problem next time and perhaps influence the outcome. In it’s simplest form it’s no more than just a big complex feedback loop and that’s important to my understanding of the situation.

This somewhat circular path leads to another habit of mine. I got into setting and working towards goals many years ago. It comes from somewhere in my foundations, and this is part of the quest for experiences one of the things I’ve been re-examining. It’s part of the answer, but there is so much more that I’m trying to define.

I’ve lived my life with a list of goals in he back of my mind, quests for experiences rather than if you want. I’ll admit they were not always the most meaningful goals, but they were goals nonetheless.

Race at a certain level, see a particular place, learn to play craps and so on, you get the idea.

I was pretty good at setting goals and did OK at achieving those goals. And, still, life wasn’t always that fulfilling as I’d hoped. Only thing was, at the time I didn’t notice. There was always something else to do, another hurdle to overcome and of course there was the ever-present, real life challenge of just making it through another week sanity intact.

My default of working from goal to goal meant I missed something important (warning – potential Woowoo stuff ahead). I missed being inspired by what I was doing. I was doing stuff because I wanted to, but there should be more to it than that. There is a whole level beyond that; I want to do stuff because I’m inspired to do it.

I’ve been trying to work out how to put this and after spending a little time with a thesaurus I think the best way I know how to put it is it’s the difference between Aspiring and Inspiring.

The Aspiring is the want of a “thing” or “experience”, inspiring is taking it so much further and finding real fulfillment.

Aspire

• To long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly desirous, esp. for something great or of high value.

Inspire

• To fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence
• To animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like does

In it’s simplest form (and I need to work my way through simple first, it’s that linear thinking) it’s three deceivingly simple questions –

• What is it that matters most to me?
• Why does it matter?
• How does fit into what I want from life?

Thanks to a couple of people for asking, dad is doing better. He’s complaining and I think that’s a good sign of how he’s doing. It’s nice to be back in Seattle, even if it is just for a couple of days sitting in a conference rooms. The sun is out and it’s a beautiful day, I’ve spent a lot of the day looking longingly out the window.