October is testing my serenity

George Mumford said something in our conversation that keeps popping up for me:

“Do what you know to do and the next step will be given to you.”

I love that advice.

I am also currently ignoring it.

Remember when Tom and I drove Route 66 this spring? We made it from Chicago to Albuquerque, decided to finish the rest in the fall.

I blocked out three weeks on my calendar where I was trying to hold time to finish the trip. That seemed great back in May, but as October approached, it felt very constraining.

October has become a giant game of calendar Tetris.

Tom has races. We may have Route 66. I’m in the middle of my book-writing program. There are about four days on the calendar that don’t involve possibly being out of town.

Naturally, I have been trying to get Tom to help me solve October for weeks.

“If you do this race and that race, then do we skip Route 66?”

“If you had to choose between the Street Car finals and Route 66, which would you pick?”

“What if your knee is good but the car isn’t?”

“What if the car is good but your knee isn’t?”

Tom’s answer, essentially, has been:

We’ll know when we know.

Apparently Tom is much better at this lesson than I am.

George knows something about not seeing the whole path.

After getting clean from addiction, he eventually left his career as a financial analyst and spent three months on silent retreat. When he came back, there was a request on a bulletin board for someone to teach meditation and yoga to prison inmates.

He applied.

That led to five years working with inmates and an inner-city clinic.

Then another opportunity opened. And another.

Eventually, Phil Jackson invited George to work with the Chicago Bulls.

George did not map out:

Financial analyst → silent retreat → prison meditation teacher → Chicago Bulls.

He did what he knew to do.

Then the next step appeared.

Oddly enough, I’m doing this beautifully in one part of my life.

Unexpected Happiness started because I thought I might want to write a book, but figured I needed an audience first.

So I started a podcast.

Then I realized I wanted to help people actually make changes, not just talk about them.

A group I belong to brought in someone who teaches people how to create group coaching programs.

Okay. Next step.

Then I learned about a book-writing program that felt like exactly what I needed.

Next step.

Then we realized the women I want to reach are on LinkedIn, and a speaker in the coaching program happened to teach LinkedIn.

We hired her.

Next step.

Then I got invited to an alumni reunion for the law firm I left in 1995 and had attended exactly zero events for since.

It happened to be the day after a friend’s birthday.

She lives half a mile from the reunion in Beverly Hills.

I can’t make this up.

With Unexpected Happiness, I keep doing the thing in front of me and somehow the next thing shows up.

I feel excited.

Curious.

Calm.

With October, I keep trying to decide things that aren’t ready to be decided yet.

And I feel terrible.

George also told me that when he was detoxing, he repeated the Serenity Prayer like a mantra:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

At the moment, I’m a little short on serenity and wisdom.

I have plenty of courage, although mostly I want to use it to bully Tom into deciding what we’re doing.

And did I mention that George is the mentor who taught the 6 week patience class I took this spring. . . the one I tried to finish in just one week?

So this may be my October practice:

Do what I know to do.

Then stop.

I’ll let the next piece of information arrive before I build a 14-step plan around it.

Where in your life are you doing what you know and letting the next step appear?

And where are you trying to solve step seven before step two has even happened?

I’m going to try George’s way.

No promises about Route 66 this year.

With love,

Ariel