All In Good Time
This sentiment is often entwined with various aspects of manifesting.
Particularly the aspects to do with releasing attachment to the outcome.
Years back while covering Intel as a customer I got the idea that Arizona was incredibly beautiful and given the weather was better relative to where I was living in the Detroit Metro Area, decided I wanted to move there.
Not So Fast.
I tried transferring with my job. No dice. I tried getting a different job to facilitate the move.
I planned on paying my own reloc.
No dice.
Years went by but the desire to move there remained. I met the man I would marry and we both talked of “almost” moving to the Grand Canyon state but how our efforts didn’t pan out. We tried together. No dice.
Deciding it wasn’t meant to be we followed the path life put before us.
Turned out it was a path that would take us to Arizona.
Hmmm.
I’d forgotten about this.
When I first tried relocating to Arizona, I was young and single. The next time I made the effort I was still young but married. By the time I lived there my life had changed and I was old enough that my needs were different, something I hadn’t really considered.
Until we went shopping.
Timing is Everything.
We hadn’t considered the time of year when moving, something that was brought to our attention when we visited a shoe department in a Scottsdale Mall.
Back to school? OH NO!
Talk about a mob scene.
Which, bad as it was, was nothing compared to the malls during Spring Training.
The rudest people weren’t the teenagers looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else but their mothers who didn’t hesitate to shove anyone who might get to a shoe first out of their way.
Including other people’s toddlers.
Aaron and I looked at each other over the heads of overtired middle school students who were alternately puzzled and horrified by their mothers’ behavior and our expressions said it all.
We forgot.
The flustered sales people and total chaos brought us back to various times in our lives when seasonal shopping included incredible chaos.
Each of us recalled how we went with friends to far reaching malls and out of the way shopping places to avoid the crush and chaos.
We beat a hasty retreat to a quiet restaurant at the far end of the mall where we promptly expressed the same sentiment over beer:
I forgot.
We spent the rest of the meal reaffirming the choice to find a better way.
At the very least a less noisy less chaotic one. Oh, and with as few rude people as possible.
Applying principles and tactics perfected while working in tech – using unique and creative ways to address a challenge – we solved the issue not by going to remote shopping locations but by shifting the time of day when we shopped.
Even if it meant reworking our schedules.
The incident, along with many others that took place while living in Arizona, served to remind me that I may wish for something but by the time I get it the variables may be different. These days, to the best of my ability, I take this into consideration when working on a goal.
In general I keep the parameters open enough that life can bring me the goal in any number of forms so long as the basics are there.
What are the basics?
Depends on the goal and the impact of achieving it.
The important takeaway is that by releasing attachment to the outcome – leaving it up to the universe to work out the details – I increase the odds I’ll get what I am looking for at the perfect time.
For me “the perfect time” is any time I don’t have to use hindsight to appreciate what I achieved.
Note: Mike Dooley does a good job with this concept with what he calls the cursed how’s.
Be well!
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