Let’s think about the easy way versus the hard way in all aspects of our endeavours. We are often surprised to learn that what seems to be the hard way often turns out to be the easy way. The true warrior understands, for example, that the way of quality—undertaking to produce a quality product—always ends up being the easier way, as it turns out that doing things the right way is the way of quality. What appears to be the easy way usually results in doing things the wrong way. This results in reworking the errors. It results in increased waste, and a higher frequency of failure. This could lead to consequences, including personal injury and even death. This hard/easy way debate is akin to looking at someone else’s outward appearance and persona and then comparing that presentation to your internal view of yourself. This is not a reasonable comparison, as the perspectives are completely dissimilar—oranges to apples, insides to outsides. It just doesn’t work.

So when we look at the path, trying to decide on a course of action, it is a similar situation. We cannot get an apples to apples assessment because our perspective involves our own mind and our mind just looks for shortcuts. It is lazy and doesn’t want to work. So use that as a cue. The true warrior knows that messages he or she generates internally are often not congruent with his or her external objectives. Many of us fail to recognize opportunity, as it looks like too much hard work! This is what we are talking about. When you seize upon the shortcut your mind is offering you, pause and wait a minute. Put that thought on hold, go where your mind is steering you away from, and try looking at that path. It may in fact become the easier way, if it ensures that you are doing it right the first time. The true warrior knows that there are many confused messages arriving in the mind, and that the goal is to understand what your message really means. Is this message designed to conserve my resources at the expense of the achievement of my goals?

You are warriors, and by paying attention to your mind’s messaging, you can leverage your secret decoder ring—your true understanding of your mind’s goals—to get a quality result that proves itself to be the easy way! So it has been written.