Navigation is about triangulating where you are.
You identify three points, and you have located where you are.
Knowing your Place is also about understanding a trinity of who you are and where you are from.
1. Your place- geographically
2. Your place – where you welcome others
3. Your place- the legacy you create
Knowing your Place also requires another mighty threesome to be in balance; heart, mind and body.
Knowing your place will ground you in every environment and every interaction.
Why is this important?
Knowing who you are and where you are now, where you have come from, and where you are going are critical to effective engagement with others.
Today people want to know your back story, your current story, and the story of the future you are creating.
Knowing your Place is more than identifying with one geographic spot, that of your birth or your upbringing.
A nomad (both digital and physical) can Know Their Place as much as someone who has lived and worked in one place for many years.
It is about a knowing, a belonging, an identification with place, self and others than will ground you.
Most indigenous cultures start from a place of seeking to know your lineage and where you are from. Many consider our lineage to connect right back to the beginning of time and the creation of the planet and universe. And if you are into metaphysics, you can follow your DNA back to when were were an idea for an atom in the primordial soup.
But that gets very deep.
And that is great, because Knowing Your Place is about taking a deeper look at where you fit.
In English Victorian and Edwardian times the phrase ‘know your place’ was to ‘put you in your place’ in a hierarchy or stratified class system. Today we don’t have to do that. We can connect with our natural world, and the nature of our worlds of family, teams, groups, society and people. And take a journey to identify our place.
Our Place.
Your Place.
This Place
Sense of Place.
Place is a many layered concept.
I think of a metaphor for fly fishing. To be a great fly fisher, you work to cast your line to place it gently on the surface of the water. Your aim is to replicate an insect alighting on the surface of the water. The more attuned you are to your environment, the place you stand, the grace with which you move, your attention to the micro world of insects, and movement of current, and wind, the more you will find the sweetspot of place, to replicate the delicate movement of an insect.
A sense of knowing your place is akin to being ‘comfortable in your own skin’ and the world around you. Knowing your place allows you to embrace uncertainty, diversity and change.