A couple of years ago I took a self-study course on Jungian psychology through the Jung Society of Washington.  James Hollis was the teacher and in one module he used the metaphor of the brain as an air traffic control center and thoughts as planes circling in the sky.  Reflection was the mechanism that enabled the brain to make sense of all the traffic above the airport and land the planes.

Similarly, I’ve noticed that when an objective isn’t fully understood, it’s hard to make progress and it can stay circling up in the sky indefinitely.

For example, you may need to hire someone to do outbound sales, but you don’t know where to find them, if you can afford them, or what they would do day-to-day.  This plane stays in the sky because “you don’t know where to start.”

In these cases, it helps to develop a plan to bring clarity.  What are the concrete things that you can take action on?  What answers questions and establishes priorities?

Formulating a plan that transforms the nebulous into something actionable is the catalyst to pulling the objective out of the sky and landing it.

On another subject:

I’m off to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks with my parents, siblings, and their families leaving tomorrow.  It’s a celebration of my dad’s 70th birthday this year.  Life passes swiftly.  I hope you’re able to connect with who matters most to you this holiday season.  I’ll have one more post for the year and then pick things back up in January.


Featured image is Chronos and His Child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, a 17th-century depiction of Titan Cronus as Father Time. Used under public domain.