Make Your Mark

Step 3 Upgrade your mental maps

Beyond what you can CURRENTLY see LIES a field of VAST possibilities — for CONNECTING AND CREATING; for service, self-expression and soul-level success. You have no idea who you can be until you rewrite the story you've told yourself about who you are.

A few years back, a Japanese tourist visiting Australia drove her rental car straight into the Pacific Ocean. When later asked how this happened, she explained that she was just following the car's GPS and ‘it told me I could drive down there'. You could put it down to her being a foreigner in a strange country, but then that wouldn't explain the Canadian local who followed her car's GPS right down a boat launch into an icy cold lake. As her car became submerged she was able to escape out a window and swim to shore. She declined media interviews. I would too.

As you probably know yourself, there are plenty of stories just like these. (Perhaps you've even had your own close encounter with a lake.) They serve to highlight an important distinction for successfully navigating any journey:

The map is not the territory.

The same is true for life. We all have our own internal ‘GPS' system: mental maps we rely on to help us navigate life. What we often forget is that our mental maps aren't actually reality; they're just our representation of it. Yet because we follow them as though they were, they shape our relationships, our careers and, ultimately, direct the course of our lives.

Many of your mental ...