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Accomplishment

What holds true for a community of people holds for us as individuals. Our ability to manifest our intention is determined by:

• our understanding of the principles that control the behavior of the system we wish to influence,
• our ability to formulate plans, and to use those plans to anticipate actual outcomes, and
• our ability to take concrete actions to implement our goals.

We refine our judgment by evaluating the outcomes against our intentions. When we analyze ahead of time, we are better able to relate our experience to the point of failure: principle, plan, or implementation. As that skill evolves, we may say that we become more adult in our application of skills.

Achieving adulthood of this type is a difficult accomplishment. It requires a transition to a state of excellence, in which our personal energies are coupled effectively to an environment that responds to and manifests our will.

We describe individuals that achieve this level of skill as accomplished. They manifest physical, intellectual and spiritual grace: they use only the minimum number of motions, ideas and emotions necessary to accomplish their goals.

I experience delight in the presence of such skill and panache. This delight can be the delight of relief, such as when a parent realizes that a child is eating without distributing food around the room. It can be the delight of wholeness, as when we watch two newlyweds on honeymoon able, for perhaps the first time, to devote their attention and skills fully to the delight of one another.

Or it can be the delight of resolution - of seeing a difficult problem laid to rest by skilled practitioners under deft leadership. This marriage of accomplished individual(s) to worthy goal is recognized as an accomplishment.

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Material Copyright © 2005 Brian Balke