Lesson 5 asked you to keep your actions deliberately small. You chose three steps that you could take within one week, while difficult thoughts and feelings were still appearing.

You now have two skills for responding to those passengers: unhooking from thoughts and making room for feelings. This means your plan can become more ambitious.

Why did the skills come before the larger plan?

The researchers explain that a plan created before learning these skills can easily be interrupted by the discomfort it produces. You may create a detailed map and abandon it as soon as the first loud passenger appears.

Now you can begin identifying landmarks.

Return to the five values you chose during the values exercise. Select one or two that you want to express more clearly through your actions. For each value, choose a landmark at three different distances.

• Four weeks from now. Choose something close enough to feel real. For example: Speak first during the Monday meeting every week this month.
• Six to twelve months from now. Choose a meaningful goal that will require more time. For example: Lead a project from beginning to end.
• Someday. Choose a longer-term direction that genuinely matters to you. This distant landmark helps you check whether the nearer goals are leading you the right way.

Next, turn the nearest landmark into a specific action by answering four questions borrowed from journalism: who, what, where, and when.

Network more is too vague. A specific action might be: This Thursday, after the stand-up meeting, I will ask Ana for twenty minutes to discuss the platform role.

When an action is this specific, it becomes easier to recognise whether you completed it. It is also more difficult to postpone or redefine afterwards.

Notice what happens inside you as you write the action.

The moment a step becomes real enough to happen, a passenger is likely to appear: What if she says no?

The passenger has arrived at exactly the expected moment. You already know how to respond. Name the thought, allow it to take a seat, and remember that Thursday does not require its permission.

The plan does not require you to feel ready. It requires a who, a what, a where, and a when.

You can draw the complete plan as a map. Represent your value with a long, winding line across the page. The line shows a direction without a final destination, just as Lesson 5 explained.

Add boxes along the line for your actions and mark the goals as landmarks. Cross off each landmark when you reach it. The line continues after every goal because the value itself does not end.

Add the new who, what, where, and when actions to your log alongside the original actions. Continue recording which passengers appeared and what happened.

In the next lesson, you will review the complete log.