Last time, we traced an achievement of ours back in time, through each and every nodal point wherein we had confirmed, affirmed, or established the path that would ultimately get us where we are today.
This process is called Decision Point Navigation and it can be extremely helpful as we observe our lives, looking for habits and patterns. Let’s try another few, to let it really sink in. There’s a second motive for this one.
Think back to the outline you drafted for a 10 minute speech about yourself, this list defines you today. Start with the characteristic, quality, or trait you typically lead with in your more concise, elevator pitch. Perhaps it is related to a passion, cause, hobby, vocation, familial title, etc.
As you work your way back separately for each of these parts of your legacy, you have likely found overlap in many of the lineages. And, due to the nature of the exercise, it is likely that once you have an overlap, it actually becomes a fusion back to the same germinal stimulus. When I originally told you that you would reach a point where you couldn’t go back any further it was because the germ likely came out of nowhere, placed before you as a likely unremarkable stimulus but in that time and place it struck you, captivated you, and hasn’t let you go. This is usually the way.
Look through your various DPN diagrams now that you have created several. Notice how many nodes were unplanned, and may have even seemed trivial at the time. But, think of how different your life would be today if you have “called in sick” on whatever may have become the most important day in your present life.
We spoke last season about how change boils down to a stimulus that catches a hold of you and requires you to come to terms with it at some point following an adjustment phase. Which of your adjustment phases were calculated and controlled, which signal to you (now) a period of snap decision and lack of focus?
If you’re left thinking it’s a miracle that you got where you did, you’re not alone. Most people think that when they go down this path. And to watch it play out in chronological order, you’d be right to think about it. You may have started out intending to be an astronaut, but didn’t get into the school that would facilitate that path, so you tried another, where you were assigned a roommate who introduced you to a friend, who had a shared love of astronomy with you, which got you to spend more time with each other, during which you learned to love the same type of music, and when you went to a concert with them you ended up assisting a wounded animal in the street, which led you to explore veterinary sciences and at your first internship you met the person who would become your spouse. Very zig-zaggy indeed, but this is very common. Your life likely has some wild path like that. It looks almost like a drawing of a lightning bolt. Every node had several options, you chose one, and saw where it would go. Complete chaos on the page.
Furthermore, imagine if you were to plot out all the alternate endings from every single node. More chaos, to be sure, but if you pull further out you’ll see it’s a beautiful Tree of Possibility, all stemming from the germinal stimulus that set you on a path from generic to your present day glory!
And, much like completing a maze in reverse, when you walk this astronaut to animal doctor story through as a DPN (that is, in reverse), you see there is exactly one path that got you here today. Any other choice at any other time would have introduced myriad stimuli that are foreign to your actual story, represented by the alternate paths on your tree. And, any of which could have stumbled into remarkable territory and changed your entire life.