This week we are going to kick off a series inspired by the video game Spider-man: Miles Morales.  We will focus on video games, milestones, and unclear paths.

In this game you play as Miles Morales as he embraces his role as Spider-man.  In case you aren’t familiar with Miles, he is biracial with a Black dad and a Puerto Rican mom. (You should also watch Into the Spider-verse).  He is new to his powers and just coming into his own as a superhero.  When you start the game you know that you’ll ultimately have to save the city, but you have no idea the path you will take to do this.  While you don’t have a clear path that shows exactly how you’ll beat the game, you do have milestones you need to reach.  For instance, a dot will show up on your map telling you to go there.  You go to that destination and learn about what is going on in the game.  After you complete that objective, you gain more insight into what the next step is.  You go to the next dot on your map and repeat the process.  As you complete the series of objectives you gain new powers and momentum that aid you in your quest.  By the time you get to the final battle you’ve achieved a series of short-term goals that have set you up for ultimate long-term success. 

What does this have to do with anything?  I’ve come to accept that dealing with ambiguity will be one of the few constants in life.  Things are more complex and changing faster than ever.  It’s impossible to always have step by step instructions on how to reach your goals.  This lack of clarity on a precise path forward makes it easy to freeze up and feel lost when facing a messy situation.  Have you ever felt this way?  In times like this, I think we have to take the video game approach.  Instead of being paralyzed because every step isn’t laid out in front of us, we need to be willing to look at the situation, identify a few milestones, and start moving in their direction even if we don’t have every other step perfectly laid out.  Similar to the Spider-man game, making progress on our first objective will give us the learning and momentum to better define and progress along a path toward our ultimate goal.  It just requires us to be brave enough to keep moving forward even if we can’t plan out every little step.

The challenge: When faced with ambiguity, how will you find a way to move forward? 

Bonus thought: Whenever I’m faced with an ambiguous situation I tend to ask myself these questions to try to bring clarity:

• What do I believe the end goal is?  By the end of this, what should people think/feel/do?  Who can I bounce this thinking off of?
• What is the from to for this?
• What are 3 major milestones I’ll need to hit between now and the end goal to be on the path toward success?  I’ve found I can always identify 3 milestones.
• What is an immediate step I can take right now to move things a little bit forward? This could be anything from scheduling time with someone to connect to pulling together rough thoughts to show someone.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry