Introduction 1 of 3

Redirection: Defining Your Role


Redirection enables what psychologists call fixed action patterns. Fixed action patterns are better known as habits. Some of the habits you practice inhibit your continued learning and self-development. These habits are especially damaging when they are prescribed by institutional bylaws, doctrines, or creeds, which do not change easily. Redirection reinforces your habits while obscuring the reality that your desired future is not being achieved. You begin to see the pattern as productive because you can count on it—not for future success, but for present stability.

Correcting redirection as a protectionist instinct begins with attention to the power and potential of your gifts—to match your view of yourself with a definition of your future success. Defining your future success requires that you take responsibility for your future. You must stop giving in to the temptation to lean on institutions or stable patterns that obscure the fact that you are no closer to your goals than when you began the habit. Risk is the goal, not suffering. Your sweat and sacrifice must yield results.

At its core, redirection is a choice of worldview, specifically perception of the future. At its worse, the question of success is defined as a question of comfort and stability—a definition that does not motivate changes, and therefore, ensures failure. Redirection encapsulates a number of choices you must face in perception of your future and definition of your social role including: to invest or to buy, to energize or to drain energy, to lead or to manage, to captain or to navigate.