As I write this, I am in an airport on my way to a retreat.

Spending the coming week at a retreat was not in my plans. Which is probably the reason I am going.

Recently, Jennifer Louden has been asking folks why they don’t retreat more often and this week I realized why.

The thing that gets in the way of going on retreat is thinking about it.

I didn’t have time to think about it. I was invited to take the space of a last minute cancellation. Five days ago.

The question was simply: Do I want to?

Why yes. Yes I do. Because I’ve been getting pretty frayed at the ends lately. And that’s with things going well. This couldn’t have been better timing. And if I had any doubts about that, even my horoscope for the week agrees.

So I said: Yes, I’ll be there.

And then I figured out what I needed to do to make it happen.

Which brings up something I’ve been wanting to talk about here: the proper order of decision-making.

It came up with a coaching client recently, among other instances – and since it seems to turning up all over the place right now, I figure this is a good time to say it.

The traditional way of making a decision is to first identify a desired direction or outcome, then come up with a plan about how you might achieve said outcome, then decide if you should do it.

It’s certainly the way decision-making is done in business. You get an idea, come up with a plan and test it’s viability, before trying to get outside approval and support to finance your venture. Which is probably a good approach if you want to build a sky-rise or something huge and high risk like that. But for more ordinary, low-risk decisions? Uh, not so much.

That whole weighing the pros and cons thing? I’m not sure that’s how things really happen. And I doubt if anything really beautiful or innovative has ever come from such a process.

The proper order of decision-making is this:
knowing what you want > choosing it (committing) > strategizing about how to make it happen

It’s not this:
knowing what you want > strategizing about how to make it happen > choosing it (committing)

If you are looking to your plans to find out IF it will be okay to do something you want to do, it’s never gonna happen. The future is unpredictable. And your very smart brain knows that. It’s going to throw out yeah-but-what-abouts until the proverbial cows come home.

Plans give can give you a confident sense of direction, but there is no plan that will guarantee a specific outcome. If you are waiting to arrive at the perfect plan before you take action, you probably have this thing reversed. Plans are for figuring out how to do what you’ve chosen to do. They tell you what to do when, they don’t tell you IF.

• • • • •

In another airport. Delayed due to the aftermath of some not-so-conducive-to-flying weather this morning. Which turns out to be a really good example of why you shouldn’t wait for plans to be perfect before you put something into motion. If the airlines waited to have a perfect plan, none of us would get anywhere in our travels. At this point everyone is improvising – and the thing is, we’ll still get where we want to go. Eventually.

While we’re delayed, I’d like to pause for a moment here and acknowledge the miracle of flight.

I don’t care what Bill Nye the Science Guy says about different air speeds above and below the wings, I just doesn’t seem like it should work. That old Shelley Berman routine is what usually goes through my head during take off: And you roll, don’t you? You roll and roll and roll and roll and you say to yourself, “Tonight to hell with science. Tonight we’re not going to make it.”

But this time I was with the kids in the row in front of me: Yay! Up up and away!

Squee! I’m going on retreat!

More than the miracle of flight is the beauty of it all up there. The patterns of the land, the clouds, the sky blue sky. All it takes is the change in vantage point to remember the miraculous beauty of it all. I totally get why pilots dig their jobs.

Retreats are also a good way to shift your vantage point to a place from which you can see how beautiful things really are.

Which is a nice little segué back to what I was saying about decision-making and what it has to do with retreats.

If you want to retreat > commit to retreat > then figure out how to make it happen.

When I was invited, I told the kind person making the offer that I needed to sleep on it. But I didn’t. I checked a few key things: was my spouse cool with me going? could I get a flight? did anything need my location-specific attention? Yes. Yes. and No.*

* If you are in one of my programs and thinking, “But what about class this week?!” Don’t worry. I’ll be there.

Any more than that and I knew thinking would get me into trouble. The hamster in my head would start going on and on and on about what a crazy, selfish thing it would be to do. What about the cost? What about your business? What if you don’t get anything out of it? What about, what about, what about… My hamster is a very tedious worry wort. And this time I just didn’t feel like indulging him by sleeping on my decision.

I knew I wanted to go, so I committed. And then spent the next four days figuring out what needed to be delivered when and queued it up so I would be free to focus on the retreat. I was even so organized as to set up a few things for the days when I first get back. Because I assume retreat hangover is a lot like vacation hangover.

It wasn’t the crazy madness I thought it would be.

(Which begs the question: why don’t I do this more often? Not necessarily retreat, but set things up so I have extended periods to focus on important projects?)

A little writing, upload some files, coordinate with some people, do some laundry – good to go.

The white noise of our lives is made up of so much I can’t.

I can’t right now. I can’t afford it. I can’t leave. I can’t take a break. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. A little background hum that’s been playing so long we don’t even notice it anymore.

But we can. And it’s not as hard as we think it’s going to be.

The same thing happened last fall when I went to Jen Louden’s one-day retreat in Seattle. I didn’t give signing up a second thought and it was a lovely experience.

I got to practice what I preach and take care of me, I got to hug Jen and my other favorite Jen, and hang out with them and other cool women in real life not just on-line. And Jennifer did her amazing thing of asking really good questions and then giving us a safe and comfortable space to answer them. And support each other and play together. And it was… oh, how do I put this? It shored me up.

It shifted my vantage point to a place from which I could see and remember how beautiful things are.

I’m guessing right now there is some part of you that really wants to get away somehow, but the white noise of your life is insisting you can’t.

I say you can. If you want to retreat, do it. Make the decision then figure out how to make it happen.

And you can start with something easy. Jennifer Louden is hosting a virtual retreat in just a few weeks. You can shift your vantage point without leaving your home. Which significantly simplifies what you need to do or prepare in order to be there.

Personally, I find it much easier to figure out how to make something happen after I’ve committed to it. There is a flow to the process that doesn’t happen otherwise.

But perhaps this all sounds like hogwash? If so, as with my systems challenge – whether it’s retreating or something else you want to do – I invite you to try this approach and prove me wrong.

• • • • •

No related posts.