Photo by Viktor Jakovlev on Unsplash

When you move before you are ready, you’ll fail. So wait. Follow the pattern of the wave, and when the time is right you’ll know

In business, I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years. Hiring the wrong staff, making bad calls on what jobs to accept, pricing to win a project, taking on too much work, investing in assets that were actually liabilities. There were many mistakes; however, they were all required.

When I was in it up to my neck, shit splashing up around my face, it was no fun. My timing and decision making were poor. Everything I touched seemed to turn brown and smelly, and there was nothing I could do about it. That was my lot, and I had to see it through. Such is the pattern of the wave.

Timing in the game of business is everything, and good timing comes from an unmistakable ability to align with the work. It’s a feeling thing. It’s a sense of the movement and shape of the conditions and everyone in it. When everything clicks, you just get a sense that, now is the time to move. Without that inner connection, timing is off, and results suffer.

If you are pitching to an investor, they are making a measure of you even if they don’t realise it — many realise it, however. The figures matter, but what matters more is you. In what state of mind are you? How do you present? Are you confident? Are you faking it? They’ll know. They’ll feel your passion and fear.

It’s the same in sport and in art; when we are aligned with our daily work, magic can happen, but only if we can step down out of our heads. Too many objectified goals can lead us astray; therefore our only work is the work. Everything else will be a consequence of this.

“The Tao never does, yet through it everything is done. If princes and dukes can keep the Tao, the world will of its own accord be reformed,” — says Lao Tzu

Nature comes of itself, and human beings are a part of nature. No entity or being forces things to be a certain way. No big boss is dishing out the rules. Instead, the rules are an apparent consequence of the pattern. The pattern is the inherent creative force that comes of itself. Itself so, as is said in Chinese Buddhist philosophy. It is the way of things.

The naivety of human beings is that we think with our surface-level minds that we make things happen. Sure, we influence things, but these things and events have no choice but to follow the pattern. And the pattern is too complicated for us to understand — that’s why we can’t control it.

In the pattern, there is perfect timing, and to catch up with the pattern we need to let go of the foolish idea that we can control it. In many ways, it controls us. We are merely bystanders.

If you want to align with the pattern and experience the thrill of perfect timing, then you have no choice but to give in to it. This is what Purposeful Accident requires.

I have become convinced from many years trying by force to bend the world to my will, that it is futile.

Instead, immerse yourself in your work for its own sake, for the enjoyment it brings. Wait, don’t think. Feel for the pattern of the wave and when the time is right to move, you’ll be in no doubt.

This is the only way to be happy, engaged and fulfilled.

Thanks for taking the time to read my stuff. Every morning you’ll find me sharing a new thought on life, art, work, creativity, the self and the nature of reality on The Reflectionist. I also write on The Creative Mind. If you like what I’m creating, join my email list to receive the weekly Sunday Letters

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