Learning edges come in different forms.
They are always, however, the place where inner & outer challenges meet.
Your learning edges are really invitations to step more deeply into life. And this isn’t some abstraction. It’s not a lofty ideal.
Crossing your learning edge is grounded as deeply in everyday circumstances as it is in your soul.
So, crossing your learning edge might mean:
- Making a phone call you have been putting off
- Talking to your boss about what you really need
- Accepting responsibility for your contribution to a problem
- Taking a risk that moves you towards the work that matters
- Having a heart-to-heart conversation with someone you have resented.
When you look at other people poised with sweaty palms at their learning edge, you may think: “It’s simple, just step forward.”
But, this is because they’re inner challenge isn’t yours. The outer requirements of the learning edge, while possibly complicated, are rarely what hold us back. It is the inner tensions, the inner conflicts, the inner stories that give us pause.
That’s why, poised at your learning edge you may decide to wait for a better time to step over.
Waiting for this better moment can be a long, long, wait.
Because, life conditions – at work and in your personal life – are always in flux. The right moment, the safe, clear, certain moment is a construct that constrains movement. When you look out at your situation, there’s always something that could be a little clearer, a little safer, a little more certain.
It’s always in the midst of life’s not-quite-rightness that you step forward.
It’s within the unsatisfactory and unsettled conditions that you move across your learning edge.
Hey, it’s called “learning” for a reason – because you’re learning how to be more courageous, congruent, clear, and compassionate. If you wait for an unambiguous signal from the world – it will rarely appear.
As long as you’re poised on the safe side of your learning edge, the world will always present a mixed message – both “welcome” and “stay back”.
The mixed and broken nature of the world is your invitation to leadership.
You can’t wait until you feel more together because this will never happen on the safe side of your learning edge. Although your first steps may be clumsy, without finesse or grace, you step forward nonetheless. It’s your own unfinished nature, your own not-quite-rightness with which you act.
The incompleteness of the world and your own incompleteness fit each other.
Your need for wholeness and the world’s need for service complete each other.
Take that step.
And let me know what you learn.
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