First up:

The difference between figuring out and finding out.

The funny thing about this particular insight is that I’ve been bumping into it for the three and half years I’ve been writing these daily emails. 

But I’ve only just realised it goes way beyond daily emails.

Case in point:

As I started THIS email, I caught myself trying to plan my way through it. My mind thought about using a story, then a metaphor, and then it chewed over writing about Tom the Figurer-Outer vs Tom the Finder-Outer and riffing on that.

But what I realised a while back is that I don’t need to figure out my daily emails. I can just start writing and FIND OUT what an email has in store instead.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Well, turns out life works the same way!

It’s mad to think just how much I’ve plotted and planned life before getting going. Perhaps this is why it took me so long to take a sabbatical, even though I knew I wanted to take one for years. I really was an expert at trying to figure it all out, control life and have as much certainty as possible before ever taking a single tentative step into a conversation, a new venture, having a baby, moving house, writing a book, ordering a takeaway, running a mindset & clarity workshop for my colleagues, making a post on LinkedIn or deciding whether to take the train or the bus on a random Saturday.

I’ve tried to armour-plate my life like this for at least a couple of decades.

I think this was a way to keep me safe and compensate for a version of me that might fail, embarrass himself or say the wrong thing if left to his own devices. 

But I’ve realised that 1) all this planning wasn’t even protecting me and 2) I don’t need to figure out my life in order to live it.

See, when I show up without a script for life, something odd seems to happen. 

Life brings what’s needed in ways I could never arrange, with solutions I could never invent, with opportunities that are impossible to pre-plan and with timing I could never co-ordinate.

Not because I've become wiser or “worked out” how to do life.

But because I’m meeting life in the moment where life itself takes place and not drowning life out with all my plotting, planning and scheming.

I don’t know if this sounds like a lighter and more connected way of living to you.

But if you're curious, I do know you don’t need to figure that out. 

If you want to, you can find out instead.

If you'd like to explore this further:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

Back with insight #2 tomorrow.

To fulfilment,

Tom