“You must be not only present in the body, but watchful in mind, if you would avail yourself of the fleeting opportunity.” – Seneca

While showing up and getting started might very well be the hardest part of any endeavor, we need to be aware that not every project we take on is going to go exactly as we anticipate. And almost none of the projects that we take on are going to end exactly the way we think they will.

If we are aware of the things we actually have control over, we already understand this but what we might be missing if we just get things started, do our part, and go with the flow is that opportunities to improve on our end goal are going to come up during our project. If we have our heads down just doing our work, we are going to miss those.

While it is important for us to be aware of the details of any project – including ourselves – along the way, we can not let the details distract us from the bigger picture. TO do that we need to be able to step back from a project both physically and mentally and see the whole picture. If we make that a habit, we will start to see options we would have missed otherwise. We do this by detaching. Detachment allows us to stay mentally present by not getting sucked into the details of any project. Especially the project we are making of ourselves.

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