Steering Into the Space
Embracing intuition and holistic perception for success in life, business, and personal development
I learned a valuable life lesson way back in my sophomore year of high school in driver’s education class. Sitting in the middle back of a crowded compact car with a nervous 15-year-old girl at the wheel the instructor said, “Steer into your space.” He told us not to look at the cars on the side of the road or the center line but rather to steer into the empty space of the lane in front of us.
Many times I’ve recalled that lesson when rounding a highway curve at 70 mph at night with a semi-truck in the lane to my right and a guardrail to the left. If I focus on either the truck or the guardrail my navigation is going to be highly stressful. But when I let go to the trust I have in my depth perception and merely steer into the open space, it’s a near effortless process.
In martial arts students are taught to focus on the overall opponent. If you focus on his hands you’ll miss the kick that’s headed your way. If you focus on his feet, you’ll miss the punch.
In the game of billiards, when I’m endeavoring to sink the 8-ball in the corner pocket while the 5-ball is crowding the path, if I focus on not hitting the 5 I’ll most assuredly hit the 5-ball and miss the shot. Whereas if I look to the space barely wide enough to squeeze the 8-ball through, I’ll have a higher likelihood of potting the ball and winning the game.
When I’m studying a book and wish to highlight a line of text, if I try very hard to guide the highlighter over the words in precise fashion, I’ll end up with a squiggly yellow line across the page. But if instead I place the marker at the beginning of the first word and direct my attention to the end of the line, I end up with a clean highlight.
In business, it’s common to focus on the metrics that constitute the commonly accepted definition of success, such as headcount, gross revenue, profit, cash flow, share price, lead to sales ratios, and so on. This is tantamount to focusing on an opponent’s feet while missing the punch.
For example, profit is closely tied to customer loyalty because a repeat customer is a near effortless sale compared to prospecting for a new one. Employee turnover is very expensive, not just in terms of the hard cost of recruitment but also in the loss of institutional knowledge that walks out the door with every dissatisfied employee. Poor culture leads to unengaged employees, which translates to the newly defined trend of “quiet quitting,” which is when a person stops caring about their job — they keep a seat warm and collect a paycheck, but they don’t do much for the company.
In the realm of personal development, the focus is typically on finding abundance or a new relationship. Again, it’s missing the punch while studying the legs.
Lack of abundance is related to such things as low self-esteem, negative thinking, or a misunderstanding of how the law of attraction works. It can also be related to hard-held beliefs ingrained in the subconscious from childhood, or from an unwillingness to let go of career directions that do not align with our soul’s journey.
Yearning for a loving relationship can be related to dozens if not hundreds of potential issues.
Seeking the external attributes such as more money or a loving relationship is like watching the guardrail while rounding a turn at 70 at night. It’s how we end up colliding with the very thing we’re avoiding.
Which speaks to the key to living a life of love, abundance, and a fulfilling career. If we avoid looking into the open space, seeing the overall opponent of our dissatisfaction with life, then we’re focusing on the feet while a George Foreman-style left cross knocks us silly.
The company looking to move the profit needle by 0.4% by shaving some material costs or cutting back on employee safety is about to hit the guardrail.
Allopathic medicine is largely about treating symptoms, while eastern medicine focuses on root causes. Which is why western medicine relies so heavily on prescription drugs to cure symptoms, which leads to side effects that cause other problems, which requires more drugs, and then more side effects. Eastern medicine practitioners have pointed out that suppressing symptoms is bad for the body. Symptoms are our body’s way of telling us that something is amiss. So, it’s no surprise that all prescription medicines have some form of side effect.
Steering into our space means we’re following our intuition, the subtle and highly accurate voice of the heart. Not strictly the feeling center but the integrated heart in the collective that draws from a non-dualistic place within us.
Rounding the curve at 70, I’m not calculating the distance between the guardrail and the side of my truck or between the semi and the other side of my truck. Were I to run a visual calculation in such a high-stress moment, it would shut my mind off to my intuitive sensing self.
People who cook without measuring — a pinch of this, a handful of that, four spoonfuls on an overcast day — are using their intuitive whole selves, which, by the way, is how we infuse our food with a higher frequency of love.
Steering into the space is a way of tricking our egoic dualistic self into letting our heart-centered whole selves drive the ship. It’s so simple and yet so powerful. It means the difference between fighting the mere limbs of an opponent (the external features and conditions) versus meeting with the overall opponent.
The approach moves us beyond focusing on metrics and symptoms to perceive not just the space but to feel into it. The examples of billiards or martial arts or navigating a curve at 70 are more than metaphors. It’s precisely the same process that we follow if we are to advance a business, improve our health, manifest a loving relationship, generate more abundance, and so much more.
I’m not trained in martial arts, but I imagine that were I to spar in such a fashion that looking at the whole opponent would represent a letting go of my need to control the outcome and trusting that by taking a wholistic approach, I’ll be able to draw from deeper parts within myself. That by looking to the whole, I’ll sense faster and more accurately than were I to rely specifically on my vision.
Can you think of some areas of your life in which you’ve focused on the guardrail? Can you share about it in the comments?
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Another wise and easily perceived observation, Glenn. Thank you. Even before I read it this morning, last night after a long and thoughtful hike, I was working on my business's monthly newsletter, something I've published since 2012. For the first time, inspired by your previous insightful posts, I introduced something new, a "Dear Readers" column at the top, intended to build a community among my customers. It's a space where I can...well, here's how I phrased it: "I decided it was time to add this introspective column to the newsletter, a place where I can speak heart to heart with you rather than entice you with my wares − my experiential offerings − as I do in the columns below when I must don my "shameless self-promoter" cap. What gives me the courage to allow myself this indulgence, this bully pulpit, one might say? It's my confidence in you, dear reader, knowing when to continue reading or knowing if and when it's time for you to move on." Thanks for the inspiration, Glenn.