Parachute into a hot LZ, make a quick assessment, and join the mission. Figuratively sure, but yeah: that’s how I thought of each consulting engagement. If you asked me what my top quality was, that was it: I had enough years of experience in handling a wide variety of situations with agility. I wasn’t necessarily the subject matter expert you wished for, but I’d inevitably come to speed and get the job done.

Twenty to thirty years later, I still feel that way, but I admit that it’s not always easy. It’s easy to settle into a certain comfortable pace, a certain way of doing things. It’s easy to grow… rigid… even brittle.

It’s not a bad thing, per se. After all, it’s the stuff of expertise, the path of the highly paid specialists, the way of the masters…

But what if that’s not your way? What if yours is the way of no mind? To arrive into each situation with experience and expertise, of course, but without an attachment to being treated as an expert? To see the current situation unjaded, not like every other one you’ve seen before, but as a fresh situation? To be comfortable whilst in over your head, with things moving too fast – because things aren’t moving too fast, and you’re not in over your head. There are things you don’t know, and that’s okay – there’s no shame in it; after all, you don’t have to suffer the indignity of an expert blindsided. You recognize the apprehension, yes, but it doesn’t stop you. You’ve been here before; you know it’ll pass. Just stay on task… like that fellow who parachutes into the hot LZ, makes a quick assessment, and joins that mission already in progress.

And if you feel you’re missing that target, no worries: Since you’re not that either, so how can you fall short?

Maybe that’s how it’s done, the mastery of this way. No worries: in short order you’ll remember who you are.