"Guidance is internal" ~ Jack King, Apollo 11 Launch. The conscious direction of your life emanates from within. The line opens every episode of this show as Jack King, Chief of Public Information for NASA, counts down the launch of Apollo 11. But he misspoke. The correct line was "Guidance is inertial" - noting the Apollo 11 guidance system was ready to track the ship into space. But Jack King says, "Guidance is internal" - and that line is what we will examine today on the ONE. What does it mean? Do we agree with it? And how can we use?
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The ONE I am your host Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Today's one idea is guidance is internal.
Hunter Powers: The line opens every episode of this show as Jack King counts down the Apollo 11 launch. Jack King was the chief of public information and public affairs for NASA. He was known as the voice of NASA and he did the official countdowns. Every episode of The ONE begins with it, guidance is internal, but this was a mistake. Jack King misspoke during the Apollo 11 countdown. The correct line was guidance is inertial, the Apollo 11 spaceship had an inertial guidance system. Inertial guidance systems are navigation systems, navigation computers that are able to calculate where you are and how fast you are going without receiving any signal. They start with a known location, and then what they do is calculate where you are in relationship to that original location so they can sense the direction that you're moving and the speed that you're moving.
Hunter Powers: If Jack King had said the correct line or what the line meant in the original context was that the guidance system was aligned and ready to track the location of Apollo 11, but Jack King misspeaks and says guidance is internal. Today on The ONE we will look at and examine that line.
Hunter Powers: The line as it was said, guidance is internal, what does it mean? Do we agree with it and how can we use it? We're going to set aside the original meaning or the original context, which maybe is fair, maybe isn't fair or perhaps we've already covered the original context. It was meant to say to the guidance system is ready to go, but that's not what Jack King said. We will examine what he said and consider what it may mean.
Hunter Powers: What does it mean? This one is a little tricky to examine, tricky because, again, he misspoke and there is the literal what it means. Then there is the metaphor of what it means. In this context, we are going to examine what it means to me and what I believe it means to others, and it begins with guidance. What is guidance? Advice, direction, influence, to lead someone, to steer someone in a very particular direction. Guidance suggests consciousness behind the direction. Conscious direction opposed to mindless direction. It's probably more often associated with a positive than a negative, one is guided into the light and lured into the dark. There's a much more active sense to it. You're being pushed.
Hunter Powers: Then the active conscious direction that you are taking, or guidance, is internal. Internal suggests it's coming from inside of you. It is part of you, it's intrinsic. External would be outside another person, another voice, another force. But internal, internal means it's coming from you. If guidance is internal, if the conscious direction that you are taking towards something is internal, this suggests that the direction you are taking or that a force towards a direction exists inside of you. There is a destination inside of you that you may not know about, but that you are consciously or unconsciously being pushed towards. Guidance is internal. The conscious direction of your life emanates from within. That's my interpretation. Perhaps you read it differently, but we're going to go with that one for now. You can write me and let me know yours.
Hunter Powers: Do we agree with it? It's kind of a tough one. Is there this force that exists inside of you and it seems to have a mind of its own, a destiny in mind, and it is pushing you along the way towards it? Is that real? I would guess some of you say, "Yeah, yeah, no I totally get it, and some would say, "What?" real exasperated, "What?" I don't know. Let me start off by saying that I think I like the idea of it. I think that we, in general, like the idea of purpose and meaning. We want what we do to have purpose and meaning, and if guidance is internal, it's suggests some degree of purpose and meaning. It's an easy idea to like, but do we agree with it? Is it real?
Hunter Powers: There are definitely ideas of a burning passion, that's something people say, I have a burning passion for this, what is a burning passion? That feels like an internal guidance, if guidance is internal and you have a burning passion that matches up. We can definitely ask ourselves what should we do here in this situation, where do we go, and usually ourselves will give us some sort of an answer. Our minds don't tend to return with nothing. You ask yourself, "Should I go left or right?" Your mind doesn't tend to respond with, "I got nothing." It tends to respond, "Well, maybe go left. We'll go right next time." There is something in there talking back to you, there is something internal.
Hunter Powers: I guess to find agreement with this statement, there has to be some consistency to that internal direction or at least that's what I would be looking for for proof of this internal guidance, right? If sometimes it says go left and sometimes it says go right, it doesn't feel very consistent. Then the whole conscious part of this direction sort of falls apart because we said guidance, we didn't say an answer. if the little guy living in my head is just flipping a coin every time, well, okay, that's kind of cool, but it's not, it's not guidance, that coin better be weighted, that coin better have a point of view in order for it to be guidance.
Hunter Powers: Now, we do have passions in life. Most people have things that they are naturally, and naturally really meaning with less effort than most, good at, things that just come easy to them. Perhaps that which comes easiest is a form of guidance. There's consistency there. If we're looking for consistency, passion is a form of consistency. There's consistency and direction, which is part of it, but then there's also this concept, at least in the idea as I defined it, of a destination, right? It's not just that we're consistent. It's not just that they always say left, but it's that they say left for a reason, that there is a purpose, that there is a place that it is going because, again, it's conscious direction. It's not just direction.
Hunter Powers: Again to recap, we are willing to accept passion as an example of conscious direction. However, to get in alignment that that conscious direction is guidance, it must be guiding you towards something, there must be a destination. Now the question is, do we agree that there is conscious direction towards a destination inherent in all of us? I think that there are paths in life, there are well worn paths, grooves in the road, and when you get on one of these paths, it can feel a lot like conscious direction towards a destination. But I'm not so sure that these paths are intrinsic. I believe these paths are largely external, created by the average of everything that came before us. You're going down this career path, this life path, you're on the wrong path, these are all things we hear people say, so you follow a passion and you end up on a path, the path for people of that passion.
Hunter Powers: But if the passion or the intrinsic direction puts you on a path and that path leads to a destination, is that enough to justify that guidance is internal? I think it's enough to make a case for it. I think you can defend the statement. I don't have a problem with standing behind it, but I don't think it's terribly strong and I worry about people relying on it. I think that's where we get into the next, the final phase of this journey of how can we use it. Let's assume that it's true. Guidance is internal, does that mean you need to follow it? Manifest destiny. Your whole life exists only for you to follow the path and just listen to your insight, which is going to give you some idea of your passions and put you on the path, and then you just follow along and la-de-da.
Hunter Powers: I think you can do that, and I think that there are probably a lot of people doing just that. But there are significant limitations with that idea, and you quickly get confronted with other intrinsic notions of humanity, including self-preservation. That internal guidance will rarely take the path less traveled. That internal guidance is not necessarily concerned with you maximizing your potential, with reaching the summit, and then going beyond that to heights never seen before. It's concerned with you finding your passion, there's some degree of fulfillment, you're following a path, and I think that's how the average person uses it, but the question is how can we use it?
Hunter Powers: I think there's two kind of obvious areas where I try to leverage this idea, maybe you can too. The first is in finding motivation. When you're working on something new and you're trying to get started and you're trying to get a little bit of momentum, you can leverage some of this internal guidance, which is usually going to point you towards your passion within the area and let that speak to you about how you should get started because following that internal guidance is usually kind of easy. Why? Because it's coming from within. You can listen to the little guy in your head. That's part one, getting going.
Hunter Powers: Then there's the knowledge that this internal guidance inevitably pushes you towards one of these paths. Even if you can't see the path, you probably are on a path, but that path is often one of limitation. The moment that you know you are on a path, you can look for other paths, and if you can leverage that internal motivation to keep your momentum going on the current path, you can kind of separate from it as you look around to see what else is going on. Where are other people headed, where are people not headed, where are other areas, and how can I truly experience everything? How can I find my potential, right? Because you get to rely, relying on that internal guidance. It's going to keep you going down that path.
Hunter Powers: If you can figure out how to rely on that instead of being so conscious in that moment, then you can leverage your consciousness, your thinking time, to think about the other paths and strategize about how you're going to jump over and do this other thing or get to the top, the top of the summit or find something new that's even above all the summits because the path you're on is probably not going to take you there. Or perhaps you need a rest, sometimes we need a moment to rest. Again, you can figure out that, that internal guidance you can rest on it a little bit, you can use it to your advantage. When you do find that new path or you're going to create your own path, once you get up there and once you get moving in that direction, you can start bringing in a little bit more of that internal guidance. Although you need to be careful because it's going to tend to steer you back to a known path.
Hunter Powers: We can go back to the old quote, I think it was episode four where Ed Mylett said that the old character you're playing is the very thing that will prevent you from becoming this new version of you. You can't take the old story into the new identity and the same is true of that internal guidance. You need to be aware of that until this new identity takes over and you have a new internal guidance, and that will push you forward where you're going. But that, that is how we use, or at least how I use, my internal guidance.
Hunter Powers: Jack King may have misspoke on that day when he was supposed to say that guidance is inertial, yet instead he said guidance is internal, or maybe he didn't misspeak at all. That is your one idea for today. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, D.C. Proper. Until next time ...