The New Crop: Issue #59
"there is no map" + atlassian's team playbook
What’s in this issue:
💭 Thought: “There is no map”
📚 Read: Atlassian’s Team Playbook
😆 Today’s Laugh
💭 Today’s Thought
“I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. The experts don’t know, the ministers, the therapists, the magazines, the authors, my parents, my friends, they don’t know. Not even the folks who love me the most. Because no one has ever lived or will ever live this life I am attempting to live, with my gifts and challenges and past and people. Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.”
- Glennon Doyle, Untamed
If you’re a current or recovering people pleaser like me, you spend/have spent a lot of time and energy searching for directions outside of yourself, looking to others to know what’s best for you.
But no one has been exactly where you are going. What’s it like to know that? For me, it’s both scary and liberating.
It’s scary because for most of my life, I’ve counted on other people knowing what was best and following their directions. This was my survival strategy, and early in my life, it served me well. It kept me safe. Walking away from it therefore feels inherently risky.
But it’s simultaneously liberating because it means I can break free from this strategy that has also brought me complete exhaustion, confusion, and disconnection with myself and what’s most important in my life.
What would it be like to trust yourself and/or God/Source/etc. for directions, instead of others?
And if/when you do ask someone else for directions, give yourself space and permission to check them against your own internal compass. In this “unprecedented experiment” that is your life, you always get to choose the way forward.
📚 Today’s Read
This read is more like an ongoing resource that I’ve referred back to time and time again. Atlassian’s Team Playbook is a collection of workshop resources and outlines to address common team challenges. My personal favorites: 4L’s Retrospective, Roles and Responsibilities, and Working Agreements. Enjoy!
See you next week!
xo,
Anne