To track where we are going, stop, look, and listen. The true warrior often checks his progress and continually assesses the threat or quality of the peace. He is forever on guard. We don’t have a sixth sense to help us, but when we become skilled, it seems like we do. That is an illusion. What is really happening is focus, experience, pattern awareness, and unconscious competence at work. Of course, it seems like a sixth sense because it is unconscious competence. At this level of performance, it seems like magic. You just do it. You are in the flow twentyfour seven!

When we are engaged in something new, we keep having to remember to do this or do that, and to check this or check that. It feels so clunky. How do we pull it all together in any cohesive fashion? We are in the wilderness of the learning curve, and only our discipline and our persistence will allow us to break through to a new level of understanding.

When faced with too many choices, choose the most important one. How to choose the most important one? Compare the choices to your vision, goal, or critical outcome. This is where some of us get into trouble. Either we didn’t figure that out first, we don’t have that information, it wasn’t shared with us, or we don’t think about it. All very unhappy circumstances. Christopher Columbus had a goal when he set out from Spain. He had no idea that there were two unbroken continents in his path, but he did have a goal, and he measured what he did against that goal. Everyone on board knew the goal. They may not have believed in it, but they knew it.

Warriors! What is the mission? Does everyone know? Is everyone ready and able to do battle and make battlefield decisions? If not, make it so! Stop. Look. Listen.

You are warriors. You will stem the slide … if you take the time to stop, look, and listen. You will uncover the truth and develop the strategy to create success. So it is written.