Seth Godin calls out three talents that will keep you employed.
Let's focus on the third skill: Initiation. Here's what Seth had to write about Initiation.
The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you're the person who can initiate useful action, if you're the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.
To me, initiation is imagination mixed with the courage to act on the ideas that pulse into your heart. Great athletes, like Tiger Woods or Magic Johnson, exhibit the creativity and imagination to strike a stunning golf shot or make a no-look pass on a fast break. That no-look pass is an example of Magic extending his imagination onto the playing court of reality.
When people in an company look around and mistakenly believe that the procedures and processes they see are reality, they allow the gears of industry to grind their genius into gruel. To initiate useful action, sometimes you have to ignore the obvious and imagine the future.
Tiger Woods, for example, started to practice visualization from an early age, helping him to transform golf and shape his career. Several months ago I ran across a book called Immortal Man, by Neville Goddard. Now, you may not agree with all the teachings of Neville, but he does provide some powerful insights regarding imagination and visualization.
Neville quotes that famous change agent, Winston Churchill: "The mood determines the fortunes of people." Imagine Churchill relying only on his five senses during World War II and speaking to the people of England from the firestorm that had enveloped London. Instead, Churchill ignored the facts, and captured the mood of a free and victorious England.
Neville taught one thing that many people leave out of visualizations. Act as though your goal has already come true, then feel what it would be like to have accomplished your goal. Here's Neville in his own words:
Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and simply ignore everything that denies it. Then I am calling a thing that is not now seen as though it were seen, and that unseen state will become seen.
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