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 What gets the job done when "I" can't do it.
Picture this: your boss is leading a 3-day meeting with you and your colleagues, a retreat to plan the next 1-3 years objectives for your division. You've heard the presentations (made one yourself), had the discussions, the group identified possible opportunities. And now, the boss gives the assignments: take an opportunity and plan the strategy. Overnight. And it is 8:00 pm. And we agree to meet at 8:00 in the morning. Perform!!
Performance-on-demand has happened to me on a few occasions. I remember one retreat in particular. It wasnt going well -- there were new players (new colleagues), we weren't gelling, and there just didn't seem to be consensus on anything. To top it off, the assignments were handed out by the "you first, who's next" method...and I was last to pick. The topic was the ONE I knew nothing about. Couldn't even fake it by throwing in some proprietary factoids!!! When I went to my room, I thought, "Sheesh, what am I going to do?
I don't have resources of any kind to draw from!" Don't know about you, but I gotta have information and data from which I can connect dots, string facts together and weave a credible strategy. At least to get started. Here it was late evening and I had no access to a data source...and no inherent knowledge to build from.
Not only that, one of the new players on the team selected what I considered the opportunity with most potential. Something I figured the boss would be most keen on developing. But I was afraid that my colleague was not up to the planning. He was new and how could he come up with something credible in the short time we had?
Basically, I thought we were all on the road to failure.
Then something very wonderful happened. An idea came to me...more like a gentle poke in my consciousness. "Pray for your colleague."
Oh! Of course! In fact, I have to say that was my immediate reaction: Help him!
So I did. I prayed to affirm that since the Spirit of all life, the Creator of all living things must be intelligent, then all of Spirit's creation must image or reflect that intelligence. Every living thing has the right intelligence to function harmoniously in the universe. Think about it -- even the smallest insect knows what it must do to function. So it is with mankind, the highest ideal of Spirit's creation. Spirit blessed mankind with the highest intelligence to live, function, bless each other. In this way, Spirit is divine Mind of all.
My colleague -- and all of my colleagues at the retreat -- had the intelligence to do what was necessary to do. We all needed to apply good thinking to each of our tasks to determine what was the right course to follow. This was good activity and deserved our highest expression of intelligence.
Oh, I felt such peace and joy by helping my colleague in prayer...and I wrapped all my colleagues in this prayer!
I still remember that feeling of happiness -- I just knew my colleagues were going to do well. And then, I began my assignment.
Maybe you can figure what happened next. Yeah, the ideas just flew on to the paper -- in fact, it was like I wasn't even "thinking", it was just the flow of notes, concepts, ideas that came outside of "me." It was pretty cool. It took about a couple of hours, but I never noticed the time because it was so much fun seeing what was revealed to me. I have to say that it was the best strategy I have ever worked on. HAH! Because "I" didn't do it! The intelligence of Mind guided my every thought.
Next morning we all made our presentations. All my colleagues did well, especially the colleague who I was worried about. My strategy was received very well too...actually, in the coming months my colleagues referred to it as a milestone in my strategic skills.
I still have the pages of notes to remind me that I am never prevented from knowing what I need to know. Fact is, I DID know enough: I knew to put Mind and love for my colleagues first. Read more blogs from Grits.
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